Radeon 8500 strikes again....
 

Hi I wonder if anyone can help me, I installed the latest Xfree version from from Mandrake 9.0 v 4.3 (after satisfying a load of dependancies) and I downloaded the newst kernel and the latest drivers for my ATI video card from the DRI project. I got as far as the bit about installing the lastest X free version, installing the new Kernel and the new kernel source, but when it comes to getting my card to work to give good 3D I get a bit lost. There are no real installationl instructions for the DRI radeon drivers, and no indication, if one can get them to install how to get 3D working properly. This function has always been missing from my card ever since I bought it, which is why I gave up on Linux a couple of times, as I like my hardware to be supported. I also want to play some games in Linux. Open GL apprears to be working but there is no accelearation on the drivers. How do I install these drivers and how do I enable full 3D open GL?

Is Open GL full 3D acceleration for Radeon 8500 cards supported in these drivers?

Alternatively if anyone has a Radeon 8500 card and uses the official ATI drivers, could they post an example of their Xfree86 configuration file, as I can only ever seem to get these drivers running at 65,000 colours 16 bit. I wonder if perhaps I am missing something?

I am using Mandrake 9.0

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Also, is there a configuration utility included in XFree86 I can use to edit my XFree file? With the ATI drivers its called fglrx.config.

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The regular XFree config tools/utilities are:
xf86cfg
xf86config
XFree86 -config
...don't ask me which is best or how they work.

What do you call the latest drivers for my ATI video card from the DRI project. What file is it exactly?
IIANM the only thing left for the radeon 8500 @ DRI is an old pre-compatibility-break-with-XFree-4.2.1 snapshot,
http://dri.sourceforge.net/snapshots...x.i386.tar.bz2
...should be unsuitable for xf_4_2_99_3.
What you would require is a later snapshot but they're not posted anymore. It would update your drm kernel module to match the new driver.
The only thing I found that could be of some relevance is in the /extra folder:
http://dri.sourceforge.net/snapshots...2.99.2.tar.bz2
but I haven't checked the mailing list in a while and couldn't really tell what exactly it is and what it contains.

I had backed up a copy of an early december snapshot and that's how I re-enabled DRI with the XFree.4.2.99.

As far as installing them, you just
tar xjf /path/to/r200-<date>-linux.i386.tar.bz2 ...in any dir.
cd <any dir>/dripkg
./install.sh
...in console mode, of course.

For ATI's, see if you have something similar to this in your config file:
...don't mind the device "ATI radeon", I wrote my own config file,
the important thing is that it matches the "Identifier" like so:
...and they should work only with XFree <= 4.2.1, so you may need to re-install X from your distro's cd if you didn't backup your old /usr/X11R6.

Yeah the drivers I got were for Xfree86 4.30 from the Gatos project. Maybe they are not affiliated with DRI, but DRI docs said I should go there if I wanted 3D. Am I to assume you are using the ATI drivers? Could you please post your whole Xfree86-4 configuration file, as I'm sure I must still be missing some steps. Performance is still very poor on my dual Althlon 2200 XP, 512MB Ram machine.

Thanks! :)

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Ps if you can work out how to get the Gatos drivers to install and work to give you 3D, please let me know how you did it. They do kernel modules too, whatever that is, which I think attempt to build drivers specifically tailored to your installed kernel. But when I try it I either get messages that the wrong kernel version is installed (2.4.21-pre3) or that the kernel source (or some component of it) can't be found in the required location. What is the generic Xfree86 configuration utility called anyway? All I've ever used before is fglrxconfig...

Dang well I just tried installing the ATI drivers again, as these didn't work but now I get a message kernel includes at /usr/scrc/linux/include/l not found or incomplete

File: /user/src/linux/include/linux/version.h

I do have the kernel source installed, but I think I remember someone saying I need kernel header files too, whatever they are.... Does anybody know what this error means, or if I do need kernel header files, where I can get them for Mandrake 9.0?

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There should be a matching kernel-headers package where you got your kernel and kernel-sources [... .rpm, I assume].

Install the driver in full console mode as superuser# on a clean XFree-4.2.1 and run #lsmod before first going into X.
If lsmod don't list "fglrx" as a loaded module, do #modprobe fglrx, then startx.
If it lists radeon though, #modprobe -r radeon before inserting fglrx.

...the rest of my config file wouldn't help much, I already supplied the relevant stuff.

HTH

Yeah thanks very much for that, I got all the modprobe an insmod and lsmod stuff down last week, though I am still learning lots of new things. I found the file called version.h detailed above - I don't think this has anything to do with the kernel header files, or if it has I can only assume already have them. (Finding them on the Mandrake FTP site has not proved possible, the appears to be no such file with 'headers' in the title).

The file version.h contains three entries, all of which are commented out. I assume that since files like this are generally edited by commenting and uncommenting certain components that I must alter or uncomment one of these entries: But which one, if any?

#define UTS_RELEASE "2.4.21-0.pre3.1mdkcustom"
#define LINUX_VERSION_CODE 132117
#define KERNEL_VERSION(a,b,c) (((a) << 16) + ((b) << 8) + (c))

On a small technical point if I do uncomment an entry like this (for this or any other reason, this will cause the entry to move back by one space. Should I move it back to its original postion (move it one space forward again) or is its relative position irrelevant?

I know its a dumb question, but I'm a n00b (a musician by profession) and I've never written a line of code in my life. (It is interesting to learn these things though...)

Thanks again.

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