Blank Screen: Problem with ATI drivers with 9200 PRO and Debian
 

I have a seemingly peculiar problem when I try the ATI drivers with my 9200 PRO (256 meg). I get a blank screen when loading GDM (and X, it would seem...). When I say blank, I mean that the screen is entirely black, with just a shimmer indicating that my monitor is on... No command prompt, nothing.

Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does not work either, which indicates that this is a hard crash. I currently use the fglrx packages on Debian Unstable, but I have had the same problem with the official installer and with other distros (Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS).

The "radeon" Xorg module works, but not enough so I can play games, which is the main purpose of having 3D for me. I have tried to see if the same problem exist on the forums, but found no solution.

Can anyone help? Here are the relevant sections of my xorg.conf:

Section "Module"
Load "bitmap"
Load "dbe"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "evdev"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "GLcore"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "record"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
SubSection "extmod"
Option "omit xfree86-dga"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "fglrx"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option " OpenGLOverlay" "off"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Anyone? i'm sure someone has a valid answer to this problem... It's still not resolved in my case.

Im having the same problem, on multiple distros. I have a radeon 9200 pro. I have tried this on fedora 6 as well as ubuntu 6.10. I did an upgrade to 6.10 from 6.06 to capitalize on the new xorg and AIGLX. My main goal is to get beryl working.

After the upgrade, my xorg is using the "vesa" driver, which causes gnome to be extremely slow. i have tried changing the xorg.conf driver section to say "driver 'ati'" as well as "radeon" both cause my screen to black out at gdm. I have not tried the proprietary drivers because I have heard that AIGLX is better for beryl at least.

I have never used edgy before, so I dont know if this is relevant, but I only have two desktops available not the usual 4. Is this an edgy thing or are my drivers causing this?

someone help please!

Does that version of the ati driver support your card?
After 8.28.8 (ati-versioning) support for older cards was removed.
Don't hold me to the specific version number thats just the last one that supported my card (which is a 9250).

Have you tried...
 

...going to the ATI (now AMD) web site? I just went there and they seem to have drivers for all of their video cards for Linux, including the Radeon 9200 and 9250.

Here is a link:

http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

Hope this helps.

Robert...

my card is a radeon 9200 pro. I heard that the drivers from ati dont support AIGLX which is why I was hoping to use the "radeon" driver which ive read is more desirable. If the 9200's arnt supported anymore by the open drivers this could be the problem, you'd think it would show up in forums, ive looked all over the place for info on this. Im gonna install edgy fresh soon and I'll tell you if it worked, if not I'll try the official drivers and try xgl. either way, any information on the various ati drivers on a 9200 would be very helpful. (also if you know the naming schemes, cause i think 9200 is the marketing name, the official is something else and its hard to check support when I dont know what series/chipset/version my card is).

btw can this be distro specific? like would ubuntu work differently than fedora with drivers or is it only an xorg thing?

thank you for helping, you guys are great btw.

Thanks - seems that my email threatening trouble with every firstborn helped :rolleyes:

My first post was wrong - they put the (old) drivers that support the older chipset up again.
When I checked the last time you couldn't find those on the website and you where stuck with the new drivers which was bad if they already where installed during a update, of course the screen is black and the old driver was deleted - anyway they fixed that.