ATI Drivers under Linux

melknin · 03-29-2004, 09:40 PM

I've been trying to get Half-Life to run on my new computer for the past few days now but with little luck. I've done so in the past with an NVidia card using wine. This time around I have and ATI card, and I've installed the ATI drivers from their website and have got 3D acceleration working. However, the problem is that these drivers apparently only support a 24bit color depth. Whenever I try to start Half-Life under wine it complains about the color-depth (which threads have only shown to alleviate through changing the colors to 16bit, an option that I don't have with these drivers). Does anyone know of a way I can get Half-Life to run (with 3D acceleration) on my ATI 9700pro?

ImAfrEaK · 03-29-2004, 09:49 PM

Same basic problem here. Bump for answers.

Hammett · 03-29-2004, 10:48 PM

You can change color depth in the X server config file (/etc/X11/XFConfig-4), just put 16 instead of 24.

Hope it helps

melknin · 03-29-2004, 11:10 PM

The problem with that is if you try to do that then the Xserver won't start with an error message something along the lines of fglrx doesn't support 16 color depth. After looking at the ATI website FAQs, apparently 24 and 8 bit depths are the only ones supported by this driver, so I don't think I'm gonna be able to change it that way.

RHLinuxGUY · 03-29-2004, 11:23 PM

Or u can get winex and play with that. Dont want to buy it, just send me an email me at pntbalg@yahoo.com and ill send u a free version of winex 3.3 tgz or rpm. hey the linux community has to stick together. :-)

melknin · 03-29-2004, 11:38 PM

Well I tried that, too, actually. I just downloaded Fedora Core 1 recently and when I tried to get winex cvs as an alternative the thing just plain refused to compile. Eventually I found a site that had a fc1 rpm compiled that I downloaded, but unfortunetly winex 3.3 seems to also be giving me this error about colors whenever half-life starts up.

Thetargos · 03-30-2004, 12:08 AM

Known problem with the fglrx driver: it does not support 16-bit rendering, though oddly enought it does support 8-bit via pseudocolor primitives or what ever it's called that feature.

melknin · 03-30-2004, 12:13 AM

Yep, that's the problem pretty much. Any ideas for a way to work around it or something?

Thetargos · 03-30-2004, 12:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by melknin
Yep, that's the problem pretty much. Any ideas for a way to work around it or something?

Only hope is if you've got an ~R200. Then you may simply switch between the fglrx driver (for games like UT2Kx, etc) and use the DRI drivers for HL... It's about what I can think of right now... BTW, you can get S3TC support on those cards, visit: The S3TC Guide for Dummies.

melknin · 03-30-2004, 12:40 AM

Nah, I've got a Radeon 9700pro which makes it a R300 card: not supported by DRI. I came across that earlier with no avail. Thanks for your help though.

Thetargos · 03-30-2004, 12:54 AM

No prob. I too have an R300... I hope ATi will have common sense and include 16-bit support in a future relase (even if it's only for completeness sake).

membrax · 03-30-2004, 01:40 PM

Hi Buddy !

I posted something right here describing how to make the latest ATI (fglrx) drivers run under X 4.3
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/forums...r=asc&start=45

Give it a read and lemme know.
Cheerz !

Just in case, here's the quote :

Quote:

Here's the way (or at least the one which lead me to this) :

As Void Main mentioned before, do not forget to type "export CC=gcc32" in your console before proceeding to the RPM install.

Then, install thr RPM package as usual (-Uvh for some of you, -Uvh --force for the others) and actually as mentioned on ATI's driver webpage.

Some important stuff at this point :
once the RPM has been fully RPM'ed launch the "fglrxconfig" and answer all the clear questions.
At the one asking if you want to use an external "gart" or "agp gart" you should answer "y" (yes).
This fglrxconfig file will write a new XF86Config-4 in your /etc/X11/ directory.

I clearly advise you to then delete (or preferably back-up) the original XF86Config and to rename the "XF86Config-4" in "XF86Config"

Last important point, when all this has been done, edit your modules.conf file located in your /etc/ directory.
And add this line :
options agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1

That's it.
It should run fine now ... and if it doesn't, you're then extremely close of it !

Enjoy !

Thetargos · 03-30-2004, 05:21 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Thetargos
No prob. I too have an R300... I hope ATi will have common sense and include 16-bit support in a future relase (even if it's only for completeness sake).

Ohh... and BTW by this I meant the 16-bit color depth

I re-reading thought about 16-bit OS support