atyfb and 8500+ATI RagePro

[Mike Ladwig]

Greetings!

I've been having major problems using the atyfb driver with my 8500, and
finally have a clue or two to report.

If I try booting the 2.2.6 kernel from the new beta R5 with an unchecked
"No video driver" and "video=atyfb:vmode:19,cmode:16", I get a frozen
machine and a colored static rectangle on my display.  If I use the same
command line, but specify a lower mclk value (most all lower ones work),
the system will boot, but I will get the same types of colored static rectangles.

Recently, I came across a post my Hugy Caley about a "hacked" atyfb
driver from Abe White.  I thought I'd give it a try.  Using the
parameter line, "video=atyfb:vmode:19,cmode:16", I actually get a
somewhat reasonable display, although the text of the console lines are
repeated several times on each  line; every ~25 characters, the line
starts over.  Also, the kernel Hugh sent me didn't boot all the way, not
finding my boot device - probably unrelated to the video issue. The
atyfb driver prints out (a close reconstruction from the garbled video):

/bandit, ATY,XCLAIMVRPro atyfb: 3D RagePro(BGA, PCI) 0x479 rev 0x7c 12M
SGRAM 230 MhzPLL, 100 Mhz MCLK

Anyway, I'm not sure where to go from here.  I'm a programmer and
willing to jump in, but not knowledgable about device driver debugging.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
mike.

[[ This message was sent via the linuxppc-dev mailing list.  Replies are ]]
[[ not  forced  back  to the list, so be sure to Cc linuxppc-dev if your ]]
[[ reply is of general interest. Please check http://lists.linuxppc.org/ ]]
[[ and http://www.linuxppc.org/ for useful information before posting.   ]]