FB Radeon with Apple Cinema Display

Wed May 22 13:48:01 2002

Nope. To be honest, between this PowerMac G4 and my iMac, I've NEVER had 
any variant of Linux-PPC boot with visible text unless I used the 
novideo option. Could anyone offer me an explanation as to why that is? 
On the iMac I had the option of using novideo, having text at startup 
(thus a viable runlevel 3) OR I could not have novideo running and run 
an accellerated XFree86 (non-framebuffer) Xwindows but at the cost of 
having no text mode.

I don't even know what the novideo option does, but I was under the 
impression it forced everything to use the kernel-level frame buffer. Am 
I wrong about that?

Murray

On Wednesday, May 22, 2002, at 01:21  PM, Nick (Spunky Cadaver) wrote:

> on boot instead of novideo, boot with the radeon:dfp option instead? I 
> was able to get it running that way but not into X free...then again my 
> installation had some problems and I need to eigther order CDs or 
> download a new images...
>
>> I'm happy to report that FINALLY I can run X-windows on my G4 dual-500 
>> with ATI Radeon (ADC) card and Apple Cinema Display. It's been a 
>> looooonnnngggg battle, but I'm finally there!
>>
>> The only caveat... I can only use 8 bit (palatted) color. Sigh. By the 
>> way, if anyone is in the same boat and hasn't gotten this working yet, 
>> e-mail me at willimur@bellatlantic.net and I'd be happy to e-mail you 
>> my XFree86 configuration file.
>>
>> I'm trying now to figure out if there's any way to get my coveted 
>> TrueColor on this system, but there's precious little in terms of 
>> documentation about how the framebuffer works. Some of the things I've 
>> had to do...
>>
>> First, I can only get the system running by booting into linux-novideo 
>> mode from yaboot. From there I can do a manual "startx". All I really 
>> had to do was add the screen timings to my XF86Config-4 file. But when 
>> I try to ask for anything but BitDepth 8 it says it can't 
>> find/initialize the proper fb mode. I've added entries for both 57 hz 
>> and 60 hz (60 is what I've seen in all notes on my Internet searches, 
>> but 57hz is what's mentioned if I do a "fbset -s" command to see what 
>> the current frame buffer is set at.
>>
>> Next I tried adding some entries in the /etc/fb.modes file for 57 and 
>> 60 hz at 8, 15, 16, and 24 bit depths. I can do an fbset command with 
>> the 8bit 57hz and 8bit 60hz modes, but I get an ioctl error when I try 
>> to do the higher bit depths. Additionally, if I try to specify the 
>> higher bit depths on the fbset command line like 'fbset -depth 8 
>> "1600x1024-57"' I'm okay, but if I replace 8 with 16 it dies again.
>>
>> ***strange behavior: if I say "fbset -depth f ..." or even "fbset 
>> -depth q ..." the command seems to execute, whereas having a 
>> double-digit entry gives the same error. At first I thought that 
>> having "f" work meant it was taking the values in hex, but I put the 
>> letter q in there (obviously illegal) and I got no errors. I'm also 
>> noticing that the screen isn't flickering or showing any other visible 
>> signs of switching modes, so I'm doubting that this is working 
>> whatsoever.***
>>
>> Finally, I tried configuring XFree86 for the Radeon (non-fb) driver 
>> and running it both under my linux-novideo boot and regular linux boot 
>> (this gives me a blank screen so I had to telnet in from another 
>> computer) and both locked up the computer.
>>
>> Does anyone know enough about the Frame Buffer to give me a hint as to 
>> how I can proceed? I've even dug through the linux source code for the 
>> Radeon frame buffer just to make sure that TrueColor was supported (it 
>> is). At this point I'm at a complete loss as to how to set the 
>> appropriate frame buffer mode.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Murray Todd Willams
>>
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