Hi All,

I have just purchased a new Dell Inspiron 9100 and tried to install RHE3. Unfortunatly, RHE3 does not support thre Grahpics Card (128MB DDR ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 AGP 8X Graphics). I have had a look in all the usual places for a driver but no luck!

Currently I have installed the VESA but resolution is very very low (800X600). I can't find an appropriate driver. Can you help? Please.


Any help appreciated.

Regards,

James

I just purchased Inspiron 9100 and building XP Pro + Slackware 9.1 double boot on it. It feels so comforting to see another person fighting with the same issues

My success so far:
- multiboot works: XP MBR booter, grub chained from boot.ini. Built-in support of USB storage and USB memory drive were extremely helpful
- WiFi works: ndiswrapper and stock Dell drivers that came with laptop (Dell R63259.exe) work out of the box.
- video somewhat works. I was able to install DRI drivers from dri.sourceforge.net and configure X to use full 1920x1200. Hardware acceleration doesn't work for now.

Download and install latest DRI drivers from dri.sourceforge.net. I used
r200-20040401-linux.i386.tar.bz2 from
h.t.t.p://www.freedesktop.org/~dri/snapshots/
and XFree86 from
h.t.t.p://www.freedesktop.org/~dri/snapshots/extras/XFree86.bz2

Below is my XF86Config-4. I think Most important sections are "Monitor" and "Device". Note that its work in progress and I'm a complete Linux newbee so chances are very good it may be improved in many ways

# **********************************************************************
# DRI Section
# **********************************************************************
Section "dri"
# Access to OpenGL ICD is allowed for all users:
Mode 0666
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Module section -- this section is used to specify
# which dynamically loadable modules to load.
# **********************************************************************
#
Section "Module"
Load "dbe" # Double buffer extension
# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables
# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.
SubSection "extmod"
# Option "omit xfree86-dga"
EndSubSection
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx" # libglx.a
Load "dri" # libdri.a
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Files section. This allows default font and rgb paths to be set
# **********************************************************************

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
# ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Server flags section.
# **********************************************************************

Section "ServerFlags"

EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Input devices
# **********************************************************************

# **********************************************************************
# Core keyboard's InputDevice section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "Keyboard"
Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Core Pointer's InputDevice section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Monitor section
# **********************************************************************

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
HorizSync 31.5 - 100
VertRefresh 50 - 90
Modeline "1920x1200" 246.59 1920 2064 2272 2624 1200 1201 1204 1253
Option "dpms"
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Graphics device section
# **********************************************************************

# === ATI device section ===

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Graphics Adapter"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0" # vendor=1002, device=4e50
Screen 0
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Screen sections
# **********************************************************************

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "ATI Graphics Adapter"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
#Option "backingstore"

Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1920x1200" "1024x768" "1152x864" "1280x960" "1280x1024" "1400x1050"
ViewPort 0 0 # initial origin if mode is smaller than desktop
# Virtual 1280 1024
EndSubsection
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# ServerLayout sections.
# **********************************************************************

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Server Layout"
Screen "Screen0"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

### EOF ###

Thanks for this information. I should be working on this later today.

Regards,

James

I have RH 9 on my inspiron 9100 but having problems with the Network card and Sound Card. Can you help me in rectifing it. How do i make both of them work.

Thanks

Hi all,

So from bonzee it seems that the r200 dri driver is doing the job for an ATI radeon mobility 9700 on a Dell 9100.
But if I read correctly from http://www.xfree86.org/current/radeon.4.html, r200 is for radeon 9100 whereas rv350 is for M10/M11 chips. And as far as I know M11 is the chips on the radeon 9700 mobility.
So did anybody try the rv350 driver ?

As much important as I'm planning to buy a laptop for a dual boot XP/Linux: did anybody try to setup a 17" WSXGA screen, and ideally with a radeon 9700 mobility or radeon 9700 Pro mobility.

Many thanks in advance for your replies,
Philippe

Im feelin ya bro (James). I just bought a notebook from xtremenotebooks.com. The raptor 64 to be exact. With the amd 64 bit 3200+ processor, a gig of ram, and the radeon mobility 9700 (128 mb). I too want to dual boot linux and xp. I got a copy of suse 9.1 professional, and a copy of windows xp pro. Im such a noob its not even funny. I quite good at windows, but I love the open source projects and how great the linux community is. My screen is a 15.4" widescreen. Ok, so it isn't 17" widescreen, but i know where you are comming from. I noticed very well that the resolutions only are at the sqaure ratios. such as 1024 x 768. Although, the screen from end to end, the picture is not stretched?? I could not get 3d acceleration to work either right off the bat. It appears as tho ill have to find some drivers. Ok, i don't have any answers to your questions. I just wanted to let you know Im working on the same problem. Hopefully in about at most a week I'll be back with some suggestions once i solve this mystery. Rock On Brotha!
Love,
Daniel

M to the Oses, J to the Esus
Qu'est Que Ce What?!

I've just installed rhe3 on my 9100, and after upgrading the software thru the RH website, one of the choices in system tools -> display is generic LCD panel 1920x1200. This can be run with the generic VESA driver (also selected here) at a max resolution of 1600x1200. It's not perfect, but after staring at 800x600 for a few days I was ecstatic.

My problem is the fans don't work like they do in Windows. In Windows I've counted 5 different fan speeds, in addition to off. After the processor runs full blast for 10 or 15 seconds, the fan speed increases under windows. I've noticed 2 fan speeds in Linux - the second one comes on when my screensaver (lots of graphics) runs for a while, but it's nowhere near as fast, and the exit air is lots hotter - probably not so good.

I had a Linux guru buddy try walking me thru a kernel configuration thing, and APCI (Advanced Power Configuration Interface) is not installed at all. In his kernel, same rev, it is. A call to RH support resulted in a pretty terse reply that the Inspiron 9100 is not on the supported laptop list, so buzz off.

There is some info on installing the APCI into the kernel at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/ACPI-HOWTO/index.html - but it needs more Linux chops than I've got at the moment. You can also do a search for i8kutils, which are some utilities including fan control for the Inspiron 8600. I've seen some stuff from 9100 users that claim it works. I hope to get it into a kernel soon.

Good luck.