Hello everyone,

Specs:

Device: Apple iMac G5
Display Driver: nouveau
Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce FX5200 (Go5200)
Architecture: PPC64 (PPC32 will not work or boot)

This could be a possible bug or conflict between nouveau and ppc64. My graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce Go5200. (Possibly Legacy)

Here is what has happened so far.


I recently acquired an Apple iMac G5. I installed a hard drive with Mac OS X on it and I am attempting to have a working linux installation alongside it. I have been having issues when I have installed debian 8.1, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 15.04. I have been getting display errors such as "DDC responded, but no EDID for TV-1" and in Ubuntu 15.04, "i2c modalias error, failed to open rtc device (rtc0)". I have attempted many installations of each. In Ubuntu, I tried installing nouveau-firmware and libdrm-nouveau2 and so on. I still receive such errors. I have tried many workarounds with no success. I have disabled TV-1 in yaboot in an attempt to remove the issue along with parameters such as "video=VGA-1:1440x900 video=TV-1:d" and tried that with and without "video=ofonly". I have also attempted several other graphics drivers such as "xserver-xorg-video-radeon" and "xserver-xorg-video-vesa". No success. I have been attempting to diagnose the system thoroughly and found no working solution. The current architecture is PPC64. If any have experienced similar errors and found working distributions, feel free to mention them.

Sorry to have it so long-winded. I am trying to be as specific as possible to try to give as much detail as possible.

All help will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

donald3.heckel

hello.

this graphic card is really, really old.
the problem with the nouveau driver is that it is retro-engineered (erm, wrong term i guess).
in 2003, the linux community hadn't gotten very far with that.
later on, nobody can be bothered to introduce compatibility for ancientware.
sorry, these are the facts.

you might have more luck with an old legacy version of the proprietary nvidia driver.

also, from the output you posted, you might also want to search "custom edid".

in any case, running linux on this equally old machine is possible but it won't be a walk in the park to get it set up properly.

ps:
general suggestion: install a non-graphical system first and work your way up towards a working gui.

Hello,

Thanks for your reply ondoho. I could try an alternative installation of ubuntu or just chroot into it and get a kernel package from kernel.org. I agree. The hardware is around 10 years old. I have tried a liveCD of Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS. It booted in just fine, but the entire screen was white except for the taskbar on the top of the screen. Do you know where I could get a proprietary driver (xserver-xorg-video-nv) for example? Maybe get a different kernel or use a built in display driver in a different kernel?

Thanks.

Sincerely,

donald3.heckel

i don't think the kernel has much to do with it, and if it did, you'd rather need an older kernel.
the proprietary nvidia driver runs as an external module, anyway.

for this sort of project ubuntu just isn't the right distro. they don't much care about old hardware. others do.

Sorry for the delay,

Here is an update,

I had such a hard time with ubuntu and other ubuntu variants on this machine. :/ (When you want something done right, do it yourself) With that in mind to do it myself, I am currently doing a Gentoo installation instead of the other stuff I tried. I will let you know how that works. It seems promising so far.

Update: I found a way to boot into a few live DVD and a liveCD. I ended up going back to Ubuntu and scrapping my Gentoo. I found that it worked best when I tweaked the boot params. In 12.04.5, I found that thus worked best:

nouveau.noaccel=1 video=nvidiafb video=TV-1:d

In 15.04 UbMate

nouveau.modeset=0 video=offb":"off video=TV-1:d single (Without quotes)

And then I wait for it (blindly) to boot
When I think it booted, I type in

modprobe nvidiafb mode_set=1440x900-32

and then

lightdm

or on 16.04 daily build of Lubuntu or on other Ubuntu variants besides 15.04 MATE,

nouveau.config=NvMsi=0 video=nvidiafb video=TV-1:d

Or just mix them up a bit to see what works.

It seems somewhat promising indeed.

BTW, it turns out that TV-1 is just a phantom output. I just need to disable it on boot or in Xorg or both.

I'll let you know how an installation goes. I think it was just a matter of tweaking it awkwardly.



Sincerely,

donald3.heckel