Re: Problems with Lombard graphics card.

[Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

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Hello,

On Nov 3, 2009, at 10:53 AM, Benedek Gergely wrote:

> I’m having trouble with getting X running correctly on a number of  
> powerbooks.
>
> They are all G3 lombards with  ATI 3D Rage LT Pro’s with 8Mb of  
> VideoRAM.

Hmm, the Rage LT used by Apple are notoriously weird, probably because  
they use 8MB VRAM which may or may not overlap with registers at the  
end of the aperture ( Rage LT is a mach64 variety with a 16MB  
aperture, split into two, usually one big- and one little endian. MMIO  
registers may be accessed in the last few KB of each half aperture. If  
you have 8MB VRAM there is overlap which Xorg's driver may or may not  
deal with ).
I have one Rage LT, in an RDI UltraBook, which works fine. It has only  
4MB VRAM though.

> I have messed around with xorg.conf for a while and have got to the  
> stage where X will start and evilwm will load but there appears to  
> be some distortion and the framebuffer dosnt seem to clear between  
> restarts of X.

Operations not working completely is consistent with the above  
( scribbling into the last few KB of VRAM would overwrite register  
contents which would impact operations )

> I’ve pasted the xorg.conf file below incase anyone can see something  
> blatantly wrong:

Xorg's log file would be useful too.

>      69 Section "Device"
>      70
>      71     Identifier  "** ATI (generic)                      [ati]"
>      72     Driver      "ati"
>      73
>      74     #Identifier  "** ATI Rage 128 based (generic)        
> [r128]"
>      75     #Driver      "r128"

The Rage LT is not in any way compatible with the Rage 128 family.

>      76
>      77     VideoRam    8192

Try to reduce the amount of VRAM you allow the driver to use. If the  
problem is indeed overlap between VRAM and registers this may avoid  
the problem.

have fun
Michael

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