Hello!

Thanks for your offer to help.

Dave's XF86Config worked. Thus, there is no need anymore for you to fix 
anything. I will reply anyhow, in case it is interesting...

Michael Lorenz wrote:
> On Dec 29, 2007, at 12:44, Jan Henrik Sylvester wrote:
>>> On Dec 29, 2007, at 07:24, Jan Henrik Sylvester wrote:
>>>> I have an old iBook (clamshell) that has an "ATI 3D Rage Mobility 
>>>> graphics controller" with "ATI Mach64 adapter" according to 
>>>> XFree86.0.log, which matches what is reported by Open Firmware.
>>>>
>>>> On NetBSD 3.0.1, XFree86 did not work but died immediately. Xmacppc 
>>>> did work (though 8 bit colors did not look great). I postponed 
>>>> looking for the error that made XFree86 die to 4.0.
>>>>
>>>> On 4.0, both Xmacppc and XFree86 start, but both give totally 
>>>> distorted graphics (in different ways). I played a lot with 
>>>> XF86Config, but I cannot fix XFree86. (XF86Config seems to have no 
>>>> influence on Xmacppc.)
>>> Yikes, I bet it's a Rage LT - neither machfb nor XFree86's atimisc 
>>> driver can handle it properly and I don't have the hardware so I 
>>> can't really look into it.
>>> What you can do is to use XFree86 with the wsfb driver, it is 
>>> unaccelerated and limited to whatever video mode OpenFirmware sets up 
>>> but at least it should give a usable X.
>>
>> As Bruce noted, it gives:
>>
>> (EE) wsfb(0): ioctl WSDISPLAYIO_LINEBYTES: Inappropriate ioctl for device
>> (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.
> 
> Which console driver do you use? Adding that ioctl is easy enough.

I do not know what the console driver is exactly, but I guess it follows 
from this part of dmesg:

ofb0 at pci0 dev 16 function 0: ATI Technologies Rage L Mobility
ofb0: 800 x 600, 8bpp
wsdisplay0 at ofb0 kbdmux 1: console (std, vt100 emulation)
wsmux1: connecting to wsdisplay0

>>>> What the display exactly looks like with XFree86 depends on the 
>>>> color depth. I describe it for 16 bit:
>>>>
>>>> The top quarter (full width) shows something that looks like xterms 
>>>> on the left, but with some "bars". Typing something into one of 
>>>> them, I only get a few dots. If that were fonts, they would be way 
>>>> to small. On the right, I see the clock, which basically looks 
>>>> correct, maybe too small, too. The mouse cursor looks ok.
>>> Looks like X and the hardware disagree about colour depth. Try 8 bit, 
>>> X may fail to tell the DAC about pixel format change for some reason.
>>
>> With 8 bit, the upper quarter looks similar, but with a little more 
>> distortion, the next section is not only a quarter but almost the rest 
>> of the screen with some black dots on green (not blue text), and the 
>> last section is similar (to 16 bit) but smaller and with black 
>> distorting the color bars.
> 
> This is weird. Same thing with 24bit colour?

Not the same but similar. As it is fixed with Dave's XF86Config, that is 
probably not interesting anymore.

> I'll fix whatever console driver you use so at least wsfb will work.

For me, that is not necessary anymore. For some other configuration, it 
might be...

Thanks,
Jan Henrik