ATI Radeon Mobility driver
 

Hi folks,

i want to ask you for help, because i am stuck with my video card. i have Compaq Evo N160 notebook & i want Slack to run with the video card i have.
now i am using some kind of VESA with 4MB. my video is ATI RADEON Mobility P6 , with 8MB. i checked the XF86 site & it says it supports my card & the driver name is "radeon" . but when i change the settings in my XF86Config file & restart my PC , X doesn't want to start. i tried also with the DRI drivers - no luck at all.
you are my last hope , i know my video card is kind of old, but i can't change it! :(
so i will be waiting for your help!

thank you very much. take care
TheShemeta

Wait, so does it work with the VESA drivers or not? If it works with the VESA drivers who cares what it says as long as it works? If it doesn't work, or looks really shitty, we can address that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to use ATI drivers.

Yes, it works ok with the VESA drivers. but i am not sure if the system can use the full features of the video card. i don't know how to test it & see how it works compared to other video cards. is there something like a benchmark?

I am using the same card as well, and no, you aren't getting all the features using a VESA driver. You have no DRI and can't run any OpenGL apps.

Let me first warn you that you may want kill the auto x start if you have it turned on. Due to the issue mentioned at the end, I start x manually.

Make sure the radeon configuration in your kernel is module, not yes, then download the ATI drivers from gatos.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...group_id=12629 (drm-kernel)

Install them and copy radeon.o to the /lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/char/drm/ directory (make sure you copy AFTER you've recompiled your kernel if you end up doing this). Then modify your /etc/X11/XF86Config file. Here's the relevant info from mine:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Radeon"
VendorName "ATI"
Driver "ati"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "NoAccel" "Off"
VideoRam 32768
EndSection

You can check to see if all is working by starting x and then running glxgears (should see a jump in FPS) and by running glxinfo. Look to see if direct rendering is enabled. Easiest way would be to run:

glxinfo | grep rendering

If it comes back saying "direct rendering: Yes", then you're new driver is installed and running.

Now, one last thing. The driver "sux a$$"! For the last year I've not been able to get rid of the "jitter" effect that occasionally occurs. You'll notice this pretty quickly. Simply <ctrl>+<alt>+<bkspc> to kill x and then restart. Sometimes it doesn't happen for a week, sometimes I have to restart x multiple times to get rid of it.

well i am afraid the card in my laptop is PCI, not AGP. so i don't know if the drivers you mentioned above are the right ones.

Yeah, they'll work. Just do a google for ATI+xf86config+radeon+pci and you should find the option you need to set. In my searching I saw list messages about this. If I remember right it was basically the same thing, just edit the AGP line in the config file.

problem fixed. i followed the site you gave me & downloaded the ati.2 package. i think it updated my X11 modules & the library & then i just changed the driver to "radeon" in the XF86Config & now it's working fine.

thanks for the help! :)

As of very recently, progress has been made on getting ATI 3D support working with the Mobility cards. I have an ATI Radeon Mobility 320M card (I *think* p6 is the same...)

Anyway, check out this page: http://bugs.xfree86.org/show_bug.cgi?id=314 over at bugzilla, and there's pages of information with patches on how to get 3D working.

It saved my ass, as I bought my laptop with the idea of being a 1337 opengl linux programmer. Those patches came out several months after I bought the laptop, and thanks to them I was able to fully delete windows off my computer! Now I AM a 1337 opengl programmer! LOL Well... I'd like to think so! :cool:

Earl

can you tell me how to do this with the patches? i am kind of a newbie, so a lil more help would be very nice!

Hmmmm... It seems I made a mistake. Your video card is actually different from the 320/340M series. I also missed the part about getting direct rendering enabled. On my card, direct rendering wasn't working at all up until a couple of months ago (soon to be integrated into XFree86 I hope).

Sorry for the misunderstanding.