ATI Mobility Radeon X700 Acer 1690
 

Hi Guys,
i'm sure many of you are sick to death of hearing about this common problem, but I am yet another person experiencing the problem of my ATI card not detecting correctly on my Mandriva (10.2) install of linux. This wouldn't bother me so much if i didn't have a widescreen laptop (1280x800) its driving me absolutely insane!

Just some history on what i have tried already - the radeon and ati generic drivers did not work, and the X700 is not in the ATI list under the Vendor tab in drakconf. I'm currently using the vesa drivers but restricted to a nice and streched x session at 1024x768, as attempting to increase the resolution was not successful. I read within this forum about how gentoo and ubuntu users fixed this problem and this was by downloading the fglrx drivers for xorg. The information looked very distro specific, so i instead used the free section of Mandrivaexpert.com. The person who replied to me certainly mean't well - but gave me a tutorial in french on how to do this. After telling him I dont speak french, nor does a translator like babelfish create any clarity in the document he gave me, he then attempted to give me a lesson in french which went on an ultra frustrating thread tangent. Eventually he gave me something that made sense over all languages - some commands to type... here's what he gave me (all as root):

# urpmi kernel-source
init 3
modprobe -r radeon
urpmi --allow-force fglrx*****.rpm <-- I just want to point out that at this point, i had to answer yes to it conflicting with a libx dependency... but i guess thats why the force command was used..

cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod
patch -p0 < /ou/est/patch1
patch -p0 < /ou/est/patch2
(I was to obtain these patches from a bugzilla website (which i can't post links on here yet!) - and although /ou/est/ did not exist and instead i created it and saved the documents as patch1 and patch2 provided from the site, this appeared successful as there were no warning messages)

sh make.sh
cd ..
sh make_install.sh
modprobe fglrx
fglrxconfig
init 5

i was also told to add the word fglrx in /etc/modprobe.preload (i used vim).

now - since i had done a bit of reading prior to this - i was expecting to get a blank screen, since i am using a laptop and my monitor will not be autodetected. I also read that i should use agpgart from the kernel rather than from the ATI driver, as they are alot more stable (which this question is asked in fglrxconfig) Well, yes I did get a blank screen.

So, i used vim to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and changed the "monitorlayout" section from "AUTO, AUTO" to "LVDS, AUTO" as stated in a thread within this forum. Now here is where things get confusing (if i haven't done so already) I'm aware i need to force the driver to detect my chipset by setting the "ChipID" property to "0x5653" - which i'm aware is the correct ID for my Mobility Radeon X700 video card. When i switch back to init5 however, i'm still presented with a blank screen!

The confusing part is that while playing with various options while in init 3 mode logged in as root, if i type startx, it appears, however the display comes up somewhat garbled - there is flashing lines on the right hand side and at the same time the whole screen seems to move upwards and then back to it's original position. I told myself 'oh well at least i actually have the driver working' but when i rebooted (which i use a graphical login) i am once again presented with a blank screen... so something tells me i wasn't meant to see what i did...

I assumed this may have something to do with my monitor's vsync or horizontal range. i have played with a few defaults which made absolutely no difference (blank screen at login, or garbled display at startx logged in as root), and also i've completely removed the ChipID section, which still gives me the same problem - so i assume that has nothing to do with it.

I'm thinking that prehaps there is a different code for "MonitorLayout" that i could use instead of "LVDS, AUTO" but even if it does make a difference, why am i still getting a blank screen at login!

Thanks very much for reading, i only hope to god someone can help or im just moving to SuSE or Fedora!

*bump*

Have you resolved this issue?

I have 1692 with X700, on Fedora Core 3. 2.6.11-1.27 kernel, pacticaly same problems you describe.

I use Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS, TMDS" and get flickering picture with all those dancing lines.

I have found post http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-304391.html that describes problem (for diffferent Acer laptop) and offer solution in downgrading bios.


ot: What about Wireless? are you able to use it?



br,

k.

I give in with Linux and this laptop - I dont want to compromise the full features of my laptop (something as simple as support for one of the worlds most popular graphics chipsets and a 1280x800 screen resolution) just to say I run Linux. I thought the greater web browsing security of avoiding spyware and viruses would be a benefit to having Linux on my system but since it's stretched out across the screen, it's proved useless. I think the installation is more complicated (and buggy) than learning to program, and lack a centralized driver base. For example, only SuSE supported ACPI, Fedora didn't detect my mouse, Ubuntu couldn't even provide a VESA driver after realising that the generic ATI driver didn't work - and X wouldn't start until i used vim to manually edit xorg.conf. Mandriva came the closest to supporting everything i needed but when i needed help, it was given to me in french. I tried to find a distro that would provide support at a reasonable price that wasn't ongoing (a month, maybe two of support would be required, not 1 year) just to get them to help me get the screen resolution working properly, and if its not too much to ask (which apparently it is) have support for 3d acceleration. Once you start wanting phone support however, the creators of linux distros apparently think i'm a big business with lots of money to throw away, which would certainly be worth it if i had a large number of workstations to setup... I think the CEO of RedHat was right when he said that if end users want a desktop PC, to go buy windows. Linux just doesn't seem ready to be a desktop OS, at least not without reading a thesis of MAN pages and paying top dollar for help. Aside from the desktop aspect of Linux, the large goverment-baseds organisation i work for trialled Linux in our workplace and although the bigger servers that dont even use x86 chipsets still use it, they came to the conclusion that it costs very much the same amount as using Microsoft OSes (and they at least get a GUI without hassle).

To answer your question about wireless,
although i didn't make an extreme effort to search all over the net and edit dozens of .conf files, the Intel Proset 2200 too, is a nightmare to get working on linux - none of the distros allowed me to connect to my base station and as a result, i could not get on to the net to even get support on how to get on with wireless, as ALL I WANTED WAS 1280X800 SCREEN RESOLUTION!

Good news. I have resolved this issue.

I have made Fedora 3 work in 1280x800 with "radeon" driver and later on with newest (from today) fglrx ATI drivers. new newest FGLRX drivers obviously resolve fickering issue with me.
I use 2.6.11-1.27 kernel, with only acpi=off as parameter - to allow synaptics touchpad to work.
i ran apt-get dist-upgrade againts atrpms.net and freshrpms - that upgraded a LOT of packages (around 500Mb download).

For "radeon" driver appropriate xorg.conf section looks like:
I belive that putting ChipID which in fact identifies older mobility X600 PCI-E did the trick. This driver had around 600 FPS in glxgears.


For FHLRX, i just downloaded latest driver from ATI web site, and installed it (it is rpm based package):
xorg.conf section for this driver looks like:
Monitor section looks like:
And screen section:


br,

k.

dvi
 

did you get the dvi-output to work with the radeon x700?

i dont have dvi output on my laptop.


k.

oops yeah, i forgot that only travelmate series from acer has a dvi-output in combination with the ati x700

Greets...

I've been fooling around with the newest fglrx and my newly acquired ASUS A6VA laptpop with its mobility x700 card, but the following problem seems to insist on frying my brain cells:

I downloaded and installed the new drivers from ATI with no trouble at all, and it runs fine with no errors, dri enabled et al. BUT - and here's the killer - the screen is very very dark. No, not blank as in shut off, just it seems very dim, as if i needed to adjust the brightness levels on the damned thing. This means I can see my Kubuntu 5.04 KDE Desktop with a little effort, noticing that it's 1280x800 resolution is undistorted, and can even manage to get to the configuration windows to adjust gamma settings, both on ATI control panel and KDE control center. However, no matter what i do, the brightness of my 15'4 WXGA screen remains quite constant. Darkening the entire room enables me to browse KDE a little further to access a terminal and run glxgears to around 3500 FPS and fgl_glxgears to circa 650 FPS, indicating that everything else is working properly. I can even hear the card's fan powering up and running as it should, again confirming the GPU is being put to work, as opposed to the disappointing ~600 FPS glxgears without fglrx nor DRI.

Also, the special brightness adjustment keys on my laptop, which work flawlessly under radeon or ati drivers, seem to have no effect whatsoever under fglrx. I've also tried using fglrx_xgamma and it does have some visible effect on the colors, but, like before, the monitor simply refuses to "lighten up".

Please please please HELP!!!

Thanx

Oops, forget that! I just succeeded... turns out all all i had to do was swap Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,NONE" with "NONE,LVDS"..... go figure!

I suppose everyone else who has dark screens might try this out and see if it works for them...