VIA KT400 chipset and agpgart

jpbarto · 09-29-2003, 07:34 PM

not sure off hand ... what are the PCI ID's for these chips?

to find out try scanpci or 'cat /proc/pci'

I'm guessing it should be 01E0
for the P4X400 chipset it looks like this

Host bridge: PCI device 1106:3168 (VIA Technologies, Inc.) (rev 3).

here 1106 is the vendor id (VIA) and 3168 is the chipset ID.

your chipset id should be 01E0 (sorry don't know the vendor ID) please post the output of the pci scan.

raejae · 10-01-2003, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by linuxnoob10k
WOOHOO!!! finally got it to work. Big noob here so i'll state what my main problem was then try to jot down step by step instructions of exactly what i did. My problem was that Mandrake didn't install the kernel source by default, so when i was forcing the driver rpm install it was looking for stuff that didn't exist yet.

Using Mandrake 9.1 w/KT400 chipset and Radeon 9500. Just to confirm that it does work, I'm using the 4.3 XFree version driver straight from ATI's website.

1. Opened up Mandrake Control Center, Software Mgmt, RPM Drake, then did search for "kernel". It brought up the kernel source, select it and hit the install button.

2. open up a terminal as root go to directory with rpm driver. install the rpm with the following command. rpm -Uhv <filename>.rpm don't use the <> in the command.

3. go to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_modules and edit the agpgart_be.c, search for 8377, a couple lines below you will see the following line...
via_generic_setup}, //AGP v2 change this line to read...
via_kt400_setup}, //AGP v2 save the file.

4. in terminal type cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod and hit enter.
type ./make.sh then type cd .. and press enter. type ./make_install.sh

5. type fglrxconfig go thru the options and pretty much take default choices. (i did change the monitor resolution and refresh rates). when it comes up and asks you if you want to use the external agp use the default option of NO. select YES when prompted to save.

6. restart xserver, or simply reboot.

I did exactly what's stated above and I have 3D acceleration finally. Thanks to ajn131 for tipping me off about getting the source from the rpm on the install cds, and to jpbarto for da rest.

I've tried everything to get this to work. This was my last hope. Everytime I try to load with this or the other things I'm doing, I get the black screen. I can't switch to other consoles, but I can reboot with ctrl-alt-delete. My XFree86.0.log file shows that acceleration has been enabled.

I'm so desperate, does anybody know anything else I can try?

Soyo Dragon KT-400 Lite
Radeon 9500 Pro

-Nick

jpbarto · 10-01-2003, 09:49 AM

raejae as you can see this thread has become quite the post. 6 pages long, it is pretty much the culmination of this forum's knowledge concerning ATI's (or Schneider-Digital) drivers and the VIA chipsets. Not to say all is lost. just a plain black screen could be a couple of things, VSync rate is off, fglrx driver is having problems etc.

I hate to put you through this as it seems you've been wrestling with it for a while (as most of us have before finally getting the d@mn3d thing to work) but can we begin at the beginning. For instance what is outputted by the fglrx kernel module to /var/log/messages when you modprobe it and after X has tried to start?

jpbarto

raejae · 10-01-2003, 10:30 AM

All right, here goes nothing.

Code:

Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 941M
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: Detected Via Apollo Pro KT400 chipset
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: unable to determine aperture size.
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] Maximum main memory to use for locked dma buffers: 924 MBytes
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] module loaded - fglrx 3.2.5 [Aug  6 2003] on minor 0
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: Fire GL built-in AGP-support
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: Based an agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 816M
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: Detected Via Apollo KT400 chipset
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xe0000000
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: Power management callback for AGP chipset installed
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] AGP detected, AgpState   = 0x1f000a0b (hardware caps of chipset)
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: AGP: Found 2 AGPv3 devices
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: AGP: Doing enable for AGPv3
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: Found an AGP 3.5 compliant device.
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] To use AGP on this CPU with this kernel, you really should have 4MB pages disabled. Use 'mem=nopentium' on the bootloader commandline.
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] AGP enabled, AgpCommand = 0x1f000302 (selected caps)
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] free  AGP = 54800384
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] max   AGP = 54800384
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] free  LFB = 108978176
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] max   LFB = 108978176
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] free  Inv = 0
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] max   Inv = 0
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] total Inv = 0
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] total TIM = 0
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] total FB   = 0
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: [fglrx] total AGP = 16384

This is the first I'd looked at this log, and I'm wondering if 4MB pages may be causing a problem, or the fact that it appears that two agpgarts are loaded... I can't check on either at the moment though, I'm compiling some GTK stuff in my Gentoo partition (The ATi setup is on my RedHat partition.) If you have any other ideas from what you see there please let me know.

I really appreciate your help... I want nothing more than to be able to rid this machine of Windows.

-Nick

jpbarto · 10-01-2003, 10:39 AM

don't load the kernel's agpgart module. ATI's driver provides its own agpgart module (that's what you were modifying with the via_kt400_setup line in agpgart_be.c). Using the ATI driver you do not need to load at all the kernels agpgart. Also when you make your XF86Config file with fglrxconfig specify (it'll ask you) that you want to use ATI's agpgart and not the kernels. The 2.4.x series kernel does not yet officially support 8x AGP chipsets.

raejae · 10-01-2003, 10:53 AM

I checked dmesg though, too, and didn't see any mention of agpgart being loaded... I'm weeding through the rc files right now to see if it's popping up somewhere. This is really weird. I assume the /var/log/message outputs of people who have it working only have the one agpgart in them?

-Nick

jpbarto · 10-01-2003, 10:57 AM

this right here:

Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 941M
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: Detected Via Apollo Pro KT400 chipset
Oct 1 09:18:57 blackdragon kernel: agpgart: unable to determine aperture size.

looks to me like its trying to load the kernel's agpgart. It might be getting loaded in the rc files or depending on how you ansered fglrxconfig X might be trying to load agpgart.

P.S. I'd post my logfiles but I'm at work right now ... sorry

raejae · 10-01-2003, 11:50 AM

I didn't find anything resembling this in the rc files, but I didn't have time to dig through them too carefully. Is there any other place it might be loaded that I could check later?

-Nick

jpbarto · 10-01-2003, 01:40 PM

I hate to say it but I'm not totally sure what would be loading it if you're on a redhat-based system. I'm more accustomed to Slackware boxes that explicitly load most if not all of their kernel modules in the rc files. I would probably recommend taking it step by step, boot your computer (to commandline not a gui login screen like gdm or anything) and from the command prompt type 'lsmod' to see if agpgart is loaded (and check /var/log/messages in case agpgart tried to load and failed). If not than most likely X is trying to load agpgart when you start it up.

raejae · 10-01-2003, 03:10 PM

You know what, I'm going to forget redhat for now and try and get this going on my Gentoo partition... I'll get back to you when I get X and Gnome compiled.

-Nick

jpbarto · 10-01-2003, 03:15 PM

I'll be waiting ... there are lots of people with Redhat systems here can anyone lend a hand with the redhat install?

tricky_linux · 10-01-2003, 06:33 PM

I am a redhat user and i have a question about how you load ati's agp driver? or during the process of fglrxconfig. What opion should i chose when it ask for internal or external agp modules?

jpbarto · 10-01-2003, 06:38 PM

if you have a KT400, KT600, or P4X400 chipset (all made by VIA) you will have to use the internal agp modules. the external modules (kernels agpgart) are not compatible with these chipsets in AGP 8x mode.

jpbarto

tricky_linux · 10-01-2003, 06:42 PM

i had an asus a7n8x deluxe motherboard and i don't really know is it kt400 or kt600

raejae · 10-01-2003, 07:49 PM

The A7N8X is an nForce2 motherboard... I believe there was a little blurb about that earlier in the thread, but I couldn't tell you for sure.

*sigh* Compiling XFree and GNOME takes way too long on an Athlon 2000+

Reminds me of compiling 1.2 kernels in Slackware 3.2 on a Pentium 100. Ahhh, those were the days.

-Nick