Hardware acceleration for ATI video card problems?
 

So I have an old laptop that I am trying to install XBMC on to be able to watch movies on. This requires hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering.

I am using an old Panasonic CF-48 with a ATI Mach64 video card.

lspci -nn shows this:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility P/M AGP 2x [1002:4c4d] (rev 64)

There are several older guides on how to get hardware accelerating working, generally with instructions like this:

Unfortunately after doing this, there is no linux-core directory to cd into.

According to this site, the source is not being maintained anymore.

So, my question is how do I get hardware rendering working on this machine?

Anybody willing to help me do this?

Thanks!

Did you try the instructions on that site? That's the only place I've heard of anyone getting the mach64 DRM to work on a recent kernel.

Ok... I was able to compile the kernel module using code from here by reverting back to a version that had the missing linux-core directory:

Now, when I copy both compiled kernel modules (drm.ko and mach64.ko) to /lib/modules/2.6.26-2-686/kernel/drivers/char/drm, my machine will not boot. I get two flashing leds (don't know what that means). I had to start in single user mode and revert drm.ko back to the original (thank goodness I kept a backup copy).

When I get it to successfully boot and run modprobe mach64 I get:

I am eager to resolve this if someone is willing to help.

Is it possible to use the mach64 kernel module on a recent kernel?

I can't be the only one who would like to get hardware acceleration working on an older laptop.

Thanks!

You're not alone
 

Hi displacedtexan,

Don't know how to help you, but I can tell that you're not alone to try to have 3D Hardware Direct Rendering on old laptop :).

I'm dealing with an ArchLinux (ATI mach64 rev2) and I had to switch to kernel 2.6.31 (by installing kernel26-mach64), as before X always told me DRMopenInit failed (with a 2.6.32 o 33).

Does not work yet (I would use 'gcompris' but is so slow without 3D), glxgears or glxinfo crash when I launch them, but there's no more 'EE' in X.log.0 and I even saw in it that everything look fine (DRM and DRI seems correctly initialized). Also modprobe mach64 is working now...

I would try to help you, but you seem more informed on DRI and DRM architecture than me (it take me so long to understand that there is TWO drives: one for DRI for the Video cards, and one for DRM for the kernel to talk to DRI drivers :s .......)

Cheers,
Greg

running the game for 3 hours and had...? Anyway I can fix it? Hardware, softare, PC maintenance, anything? I understand any of this so if you spot a problem tell me: CPU: 2 XP Home ; Service Pack 22600 Video card: ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 -Video Ram: 512MB -Video Card 3D Acceleration: Yes -Pixel shader: 3.0 Video card.

Jashim;
Please remove the link from your signature.--If you want to advertise here, see the links at the bottom of the page.