[aRTee]

Just got a secondhand compaq armada m700; the power features don't work, nor do I get 3d graphics.
Oh, and I haven't managed to get any tv-out either....

I have found and read all relevant pages through laptoplinux.org,...
things are not exactly clear or explained in detail, ....


With acpi I can suspend to ram, but it won't wake up properly, so I need to reset. WIth suspend to disk (pmsuspend2 or the powerbutton) it seems to write stuff to the swap partition fine, but it hangs at boot at the "waiting for dma's to settle"....
Then I have to boot with
linux noresume
after that in harddrake I have to format the swap partition (and mount it) to avoid the machine from hanging the next time again.

Question one: are there bios settings that are not offered in the bios but have to be chosen under windows?
Maybe I'm just missing something here.....
Oh, btw, I don't have any windows on this machine, but if necessary I could stick in a fully installed harddrive for a very similar machine, to change settings...

Anyway, I tried apm too (and also all combinations with apm=on/off, noapic, nolapic, acpi=on, acpi=off), with pmsuspend2 it usually doesn't wake up well enough from suspend to ram, so either the xserver dies or it hangs. And in no case does the external usb mouse function any longer....


I got the second/external display to work by just booting with it connected. I got the ati tvout tool installed, but it will only tell me what displays are connected, not switch them on or off, not switch on the tvout....

Lastly, it would be nice to get 3d and thus tuxracer to function; I read a lot about extra drivers (pointing to dri.sf.net), about needing the mach64 driver or not, but loads of pages on this laptop are heavily outdated, and I also came across info that lots has been incorporated into the xfree ati driver.......

If anyone knows about a clear and concise howto, or has any more info or things to try I'd appreciate it.

This post has been edited by aRTee: 22 August 2004 - 09:55 PM

[jeremy1701]

Dude!! I've been waiting to hear from someone else that has an m700!

I'm in the same boat you are... no 3D acceleration, limited power support and limited external display funtionality.

I can get APM to work better then ACPI, but I think ACPI is where I want to be. If you change the lock on suspend option in your APM suspend script, you'll get much better results when you come out of suspend, about 60% and the mouse will work everytime.

For the 3D, I've been told you can compile from source the GATOS project to get it working. I need my puter this and next weekend, so re-compiling my kernel (for the first time) is out of the question for a couple a weeks. When I do try it, I'll let you know.

I'll get you more details when I get home from work.

BTW... Does your fnc+f4 work to turn on and off the external monitor?

Jeremy

[aRTee]

Hi Jeremy,

sorry for this late reply, got so many other things to do, didn't boot the laptop in about a week....

I figured out there is another bios-like menu, just after the compaq bootsplash, you can get there by pressing ctrl-s (if I'm not mistaken). It has some settings for network boot and also acpi or apm selection.

I set it to apm, then booted linux. (Also tried acpi, no success..)

Now I can suspend with the blue button, but only once. The system comes back online, the second time I try it hangs when it tries to come back online....

I haven't tried to change the lock in the suspend scripts, will give that another go.
Is there a special apm suspend script or do you just mean this one: /etc/sysconfig/suspend (from memory)?

fn+f4 does not do anything for me. The external monitor works when pluggen in upon boot.

I have had no success getting the tv-out working either.
I tried with the atitvout (check the gatos project pages), but it tells me it cannot write to VBS or so... have to try again and search the web.

I'll keep you updated of any progress.

Oh, one really good thing: I had some help from a collegue and managed to get my second battery working; should be good for 2 hrs or so; the first one does over 2.5hrs, neat...

BTW I upgraded to mdk 10.0.2 with kernel 2.6.3-15 if I'm not mistaken.

[jeremy1701]

Wow, thanks for that ultra-informative crtl-s tip!!!

:D

I'm going to check that out. It would seem to be what I've been looking for.

I, too am running MDK 10.0 with kernel 2.6. Here's what I've found:

I think 3d-accel, fnc f4 and TVout are all related to getting a better ATI driver working (namely ATI.2 from gatos). My plan as of right now is to try to get it working using MDK 10.0 kernel 2.4 version, as those are available through RPM. If I can't, I've heard it works great in MDK9.2, so I might revert. If I get that far, I'll let you know. Then I'm going to try and re-compile support into my 2.6 kernel. One step at a time in an eighteen-million step process. I can't start that until next weekend, as I need my machine for a trip I'm taking this weekend (can't be caught Linux-less :P )

We'll get it!
BTW... I'll look for that script tonight, but I seem to remember that was about right.

Jeremy

[aRTee]

I'm just on it to get ati.2 drivers working; have no time at this very moment (will have some after the weekend), but I have downloaded them already, both the rpms and the tar.gz source files.

Managed to get suspend-to-ram working if I first switch to console (ctrl-alt-F1), then hit the blue power button. Tells me the cardmgr process exits, which I don't care about since I have no pcmcia cards.
I can then ctrl-alt-f7 back to the graphical session without a problem.

Whoops, just tried again, now it somehow doesn't work, yesterday it worked 2 out of 2 times.... darn!!

[jeremy1701]

When I try it that way, I seem to get a 'stuck' keyboard. The letters just continually repeat. I've heard that hitting crtl+A fixes this. Do you find have that problem?

If switching to console mode solves your suspend problems, it should be possible to add that to the suspend script, so that the step is automated. I'll try tonight.

Let me know how the Gatos drivers work for you.
Jeremy

[aRTee]

To start with your question: no, my keys are okay, but : suspend doesn't want to play nice anymore,... :(
Still testing, but so far one lock every other trial...

I just tried the ati2 drivers; still get the message:
VBE call failed.

To use the ati2 drivers, I unpacked the tar.gz file with the binaries from gatos.sf.net, then moved (as root) /usr/X11R6 to /usr/X11R6.orig_mdk, then logged off and did
ctrl-alt-F1
to go to console, logged on as root and did:
telinit 3
to shut down the running X with (mdk)kdm login manager, then tried the new driver,... X wouldn't start, so I did:
cp -r /usr/X11R6.orig_mdk/* /usr/X11R6/.
and hit 'n' whenever it asked me if I wanted it to copy something onto one of the newer drivers.
I could then run X with the simple command:
X
which gave me the nice blue screen with the X-cursor. I killed that with ctrl-alt-bkspace.

Somehow I couldn't do
telinit 5
and get my login manager running on a newly spawned X, so (yuk!) I just rebooted, and then all was fine.

But, still just about 100 fps in glxgears and a warning that my XFree had no dri, and no tvout/external monitor, just the warning that the VBE doesn't like me....
No joy.

I also tried to install the drm driver, but it exists after spitting out lots of errors; tried as root too (which shouldn't be necessary to compile, but ah well), no more luck either. Seems it may not be for 2.6 kernels at all.

Off to watch revolution OS, had it lying around here for a while now, and the wife's not home yet....
Let me know if you are making any progress.

[jeremy1701]

That's further then I got, but now that I'm back I plan on trying out a couple of more daring options. But first...

1) How do you know how many frames per second you're getting with GLXGears?
2) Do you have direct rendering? What the output of

glxinfo | grep direct

I was told by another that the 2.6 kernel had DRI support out of the box, but from what you're saying that doesn't seem to be the case?

Jeremy

[copy of preceding post removed by spinynorman]

[aRTee]

Just run the program
glxgears
and let it run half a minute, with no windows open that have moving content or content that gets updated (gkrellm or so) for highest scores. I normally don't do that, just run it with not too many graphical things going on...

My lappy is not running, but I'll get you the result of
glxinfo | grep direct
next time; I can tell you that I did run it and that it did indicate that direct rendering is not working.

The dri is not a matter of the kernel but of XFree86 or nowadays X.org, the Xserver...

[jeremy1701]

aRTee, on Sep 9 2004, 12:08 PM, said:

The dri is not a matter of the kernel but of XFree86 or nowadays X.org, the Xserver...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

:oops:

I meant DRM.

Jeremy

[ac_dispatcher]

What you will find with a lot of older cards is this:

The 2.4 kernel played nice with the older ATI cards (pre 7000)

The 2.6 kernels are another matter. I have a ATI Mobility M6 LY. I worked MANY hours trying to get DRM to work with this card with the 2.6 kernel. I have it now, problem solved. You see I read TONS of postings on load this first or that first try this drive or that. In the end I figured it out.

The 2.6 kernel has useable drivers for your card. With the 2.4 you never used the internal drivers, with the 2.6 its about the only way you'll get direct rendering to work. Im not talking loading kernel modules Im talking a custom kernel compile with the chipset, agpgart, and video card built into the kernel.

>>>
I've been thinking on writing a HOW-TO get DRM (3d Acceleration) working on older cards. Not sure if you have DRI working?

open a terminal (konsole) and type:

$glxinfo | grep direct

What do you get?

here is mine:

Quote

acdispatcher@arora ~ $ glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes

If you don't have that (except those who have nividia cards) you don't have DRI or 3d acceleration
.

The following cards have drivers in the 2.6 kernel:

3dfx Banshee/Voodoo3+ - 3dfx Banshee or Voodoo3 (or later)
3dlabs GMX 2000 - old gamma driver
ATI Rage 128 - ATI Rage 128 graphics card
ATI Radeon - ATI Radeon graphics card both PCI and AGP versions
Matrox g200/g400 - Matrox G200, G400 or G450
SiS video cards - SiS 630 or compatible video chipset


Ill write a HOW to if a few people here need it. I give no guarantees on making it work but it could be fun :P

Basically it will be a How-To compile a custom kernel step by step for video card DRI purposes. I cant start it for a few days (work) if anyone needs it. I don't want to do it either if no one needs it.


Notes on DRI / DRM

What is DRI?

Quote

The Direct Rendering Infrastructure (dri.sourceforge.net), also known as the DRI, is a framework for allowing direct access to graphics hardware in a safe and efficient manner. It includes changes to the X server, to several client libraries and to the kernel. The first major use for the DRI is to create fast OpenGL implementations.

What is XFree-DRM and how does it relate to regular XFree86?

Quote

XFree-DRM is an enhancement to XFree86 that adds 3D acceleration for cards by adding the kernel module necessary for direct rendering.

People who can't get direct rendering working with just XFree. XFree-DRM works for 3dfx, gamma, i8x0, matrox, rage128, radeon, mach64 (as of xfree-drm-4.3.0-r7) and sis300 series drivers. Since the 2.4 kernels' Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) doesn't support XFree 4.3, the xfree-drm package is needed. If you're using a 2.6 kernel, its DRM supports XFree 4.3.

XFree or now a days Xorg :P

Thats why you need to get DRM working via the kernel with the new 2.6 kernels.


Sorry so :offtopic:

[jeremy1701]

I can't direct rendering working at all... I think at tutorial would be great.

MDK 10.0, kernel 2.6, ATI Rage mobility (mach64). glxinfo tells me direct rendering: no. What do I do from here?

Thanks,
Jeremy

[Jet2k5]

The only thing that I see right now is that you compile the drivers into the Kernel I just got done compiling my first kernel thanks to ac_dispatcher. So far nothing has gone bad. Proabably as I watch the people reading this ac_dispatcher might give you directions on how to compile a kernel maybe. Anyways in the mean time read more about compiling a kernel.

-Luis

[ac_dispatcher]

Im working until Monday. Ill work on a uber newbie style kernel config / compile for DRM.

Looks like it will have to include basic kernel compile, lilo setup, and XF86Config-4 (or xorg.conf) setup. Might take a day or two but Ill start on it Monday..

This post has been edited by ac_dispatcher: 11 September 2004 - 06:47 AM

[w-buffer]

You need the DRI module for your kernel and also the XFree86 Modules, i got an Armada M300 which also uses a Mach64 based video chipset, the trick to get it working is to use the latest DRI snapshots for mach64.

First go to:
http://www.freedeskt...~dri/snapshots/

And download the latest mach64-2004xxxx-linux.i386.tar.bz2, where xxxx is the month and day in numbers, for example, 09 10 which means September 10, this translates to mach64-20040910-linux.i386.tar.bz2. You also need to download this file:

http://www.freedeskt...ras/XFree86.bz2

It may be convenient to download the latest common-2004xxxx-linux.i386.tar.bz2, if you do then make sure to uncompress it first.

Before anything, make sure to backup the following directory and files:
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules
/usr/X11R6/lib/libGL*
/usr/libGL*

First save anything you are doing and close all apps and logout, now go to the console (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and login as root, and shut down the X Server with:

$] init 3

Now go to the directory where you uncompressed the common-2004xxxx-linux.i386.tar.bz2 file and enter to a directory called dripkg. We are almost ready to install the common DRI components (actually just MesaGL libs and glx, you can skip this if you have an updated version of Mesa like 6.x), then run the install script:

$] sh install.sh

Now get out of dripkg ("cd ..") and remove it ("rm -fr dripkg"), now uncompress the mach64-2004xxxx-linux.i386.tar.bz2 file, it will unpack to a directory called dripkg (make sure it dosen't exist before as it will overwrite parts of it and mess things up, probably), now enter to dripkg, finally install the dri mach64 modules:

$] sh install.sh

Make sure that you have the correct kernel sources, if you are using mandrake's kernel then install the sources too:

$] urpmi kernel-source

The kernel sources are needed because the dri module needs to be compiled for your specific kernel. Also, the XFree modules uses a bit newer ABI from the standard XFree86 4.3 that comes with Mandrake 10, so make sure to decompress the file XFree86.bz2 ("bunzip2 XFree86.bz2") and copy the uncompressed XFree86 to /usr/X11R6/bin, it will replace old XFree86 server binary, so make sure to back it up just in case ("cp /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86.old").

Finally insert the kernel module:
$] modprobe mach64

If successful then go back to graphics:
$] init 5

Do a glxinfo | grep "direct", and check of "Direct Rendering: Yes", then finally try to run glxgears. If your machine lockups hard, don't worry, do a hard restart (by button or disconnecting the power) and restart, the next time it starts it won't use the DRI acceleration as it is provided by the mach64 module (i hope you didn't added it to modules.conf or something like that to load it at boot...), now at this point you are now sure that it went wrong, tha problem may be the mach64 drivers, which are not mature enough, in which case the backup will come handy if you decide to revert (do it only if you loosed any functionability available before installing mach64 dri), just rewrite this files from your backups (you did them didn't you?... backups...)

/usr/X11R6/lib/modules
/usr/X11R6/lib/libGL*
/usr/libGL*

And replace:
/usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 by /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86.old

I hope this is useful, i don't guarante it will work or anything, you know the no guarantee statement.

Final Notes:
* To make DRI work you need the triple of memory that uses your current resolution, use this formula:

ScreenHeight * ScreenWidth * (BPP / 8) * 3

Where BPP is your screen bits per pixel (8, 16, 24, 32), this is the minimoum amount of video memory needed to use DRI.

* Try adding

Options "ForcePCIMode" "YES"

To the devices section of your XF86Config file, as many mach64 chipsets are also PCI based.

References:

DRI:
http://dri.sourceforge.net

DRI TroubleShooting
http://dri.sourcefor...Troubleshooting

DRI Downloads
http://dri.sourcefor...in.cgi/Download

This post has been edited by w-buffer: 12 September 2004 - 06:45 AM