New G4 Powerbook Video (Radeon Mobility 9600) Problems

[Atro Tossavainen]

Ed,

> The most obnoxious is that there is no video support for the video chip 
> they upgraded to: the ATI Radeon Mobility 9600. I think the older 
> powerbook had the 9000 which has video support.

It's not just YDL.  It's everybody who uses XFree86, on all platforms.

Support for a whole lot of new Radeons in XFree86 is only in the
development stage.  You can download a development snapshot of XFree86
(currently at 4.3.99-14 from today, 10 Oct 2003), compile, replace a
few files, and it _should_ work.

No sensible Linux distribution should include development snapshots of
anything.  It follows that Red Hat has often been "not a sensible Linux
distribution".

Get this 42 megabyte package:

ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/develsnaps/XFree86-4.3.99.14.tar.bz2

Unpack, cd xc, make World, (wait a long time).

Replace /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 with the one you just made, replace
the contents of the /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers directory with
the new build, and it should Just Work.

> The YDL supported hardware page says this video isn't supported but 
> gives no clue about the future.

The future is today, but you need to be able to build your own XFree86
from source, and it is definitely not supported (but should work
nonetheless).

> Does anyone have any info about whether this chip might ever be 
> supported/have an available driver for Linux (ppc)?

It will be properly supported in the next stable release of XFree86.

> ATI refers us to our hardware vendors--in this case Apple.

Surprisingly enough, just about everybody thinks that Linux == x86.

Linux blah 2.4.20-ben1 #5 Tue Feb 18 12:27:17 EET 2003 ppc unknown
Linux blah 2.4.19-sp #3 Tue Feb 4 17:56:07 EET 2003 alpha unknown
Linux blah 2.4.22 #3 Mon Oct 6 09:32:30 EEST 2003 i686 unknown

:-)

-- 
Atro Tossavainen (Mr.)               / The Institute of Biotechnology at
Systems Analyst, Techno-Amish &     / the University of Helsinki, Finland,
+358-9-19158939  UNIX Dinosaur     / employs me, but my opinions are my own.
< URL : http : / / www . helsinki . fi / %7E atossava / >

File attachments NOT welcome unless agreed to beforehand.