iBook x config

[Stephen Harker]

Hi Nicole,

On Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 01:34:35AM -0400, nicole wrote:
> If he finds something that works, please post about it.  I had the 
> 2.6.6 kernel and have the "torn" affect you describe... compiling CVS 
> helped enough that my display is mostly useable. I have tried the 
> chipset id variable with no success.  Currently my display is useable 
> for about 5 - 10 minutes before headaches ensue from the "scrolling 
> line" effect.  I am trying to get this to work though at this point I 
> am ready to try another distribution.  I got my iBook in 11/03 so I 
> suspect I do not have the older Radeon chipset this works on.

Another update, but no good news.  I downloaded
xorg-x11-6.7.0-5.src.rpm from Fedora 2.  To make it we also needed
freetype-2.1.4-5.src.rpm since it needs a later version of freetype
than that which accompanies YDL 3.0/3.0.1 (strictly it requires 2.1.7
or later, but I did not find that on the local (Monash) mirror and
2.1.4 seems to be used by the maintainer, so I just modified the spec
file).  As xterm no longer seems to come in the archive I also
downloaded xterm-179-5.src.rpm from fedora 2.

These all made quite happily, creating a raft of ppc.rpm files.  To
install them required doing a `rpm -qa | grep xfree' to find which
rpm's were installed, then doing a `rpm -Uvh -nodeps ' followed by an  
appropriate list of new ppc.rpm's.  The -nodeps was because a range of
items have XFree86 hard coded for the Xserver.  There are some things
that then need doing if the new Xserver worked.

I then tried to configure (now /etc/X11/xorg.conf) and run the
Xserver.  An 8bit framebuffer version works reasonably (better than
the YDL 3.0/3.0.1).  Using higher bitdepth causes it to not run.  I
then tried using the radeon driver.  This correctly identifies the
chipset and appears to believe it works, but gives a blank screen.
For some reason the radeon driver cannot start the framebuffer device
and this may be the cause of the problem.  

Interestingly I can type fbset and get output by redirecting to a file
while the screen is invisible and find the output is setting the
modeline to 100kHz, 100Hz (rather than the 65kHz, 60 Hz the log file
suggests).  At this point I am not sure what to try (except to wait
for YDL 4.0).  I have seen web pages from people who have the iBook G4
with M9+ working with accelerated X in debian linux, so it can be
done.  Some excerpts from the /var/log/Xorg.0.log:

Release Date: 18 December 2003
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 6.7
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.6 ppc [ELF] 
Current Operating System: Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.7 #1 Sun Aug 1 15:35:09 EST 2004 ppc
Build Date: 04 August 2004
Build Host: 

(II) Primary Device is: PCI 00:10:0
(--) Assigning device section with no busID to primary device
(--) Chipset ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 (M9+) 5C63 (AGP) found

(II) Loading sub module "fbdevhw"
(II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw"
(II) Reloading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/linux/libfbdevhw.a
(WW) open /dev/fb2: No such device
(WW) open /dev/fb3: No such device
(WW) open /dev/fb4: No such device
(WW) open /dev/fb5: No such device
(WW) open /dev/fb6: No such device
(WW) open /dev/fb7: No such device
(EE) RADEON(0): Failed to open framebuffer device, consult warnings and/or errors above for possible reasons
	(you may have to look at the server log to see warnings)
(WW) RADEON(0): fbdevHWInit failed, not using framebuffer device

(II) RADEON(0): Using XFree86 Acceleration Architecture (XAA)
	Screen to screen bit blits
	Solid filled rectangles
	8x8 mono pattern filled rectangles
	Indirect CPU to Screen color expansion
	Solid Lines
	Scanline Image Writes
	Offscreen Pixmaps
	Setting up tile and stipple cache:
		32 128x128 slots
		32 256x256 slots
		16 512x512 slots
(II) RADEON(0): Acceleration enabled
(==) RADEON(0): Backing store disabled
(==) RADEON(0): Silken mouse enabled
(II) RADEON(0): Using hardware cursor (scanline 770)
(II) RADEON(0): Largest offscreen area available: 1024 x 7417
(**) Option "dpms"
(**) RADEON(0): DPMS enabled
(WW) RADEON(0): Option "fbdev" is not used
(II) RADEON(0): Direct rendering disabled


(II) RADEON(0): Wrote: rd=12, fd=443, pd=0

-- 
Stephen Harker                           Stephen.Harker@spme.monash.edu.au
School of Physics & Materials Engineering
Monash University                       http://www.ph.adfa.edu.au/s-harker/
                                 Baloney Baffles brains: Eric Frank Russell