Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Quick Search: in
2.6.6 on sparc64 blade 150, ati mach64: xfree or xorg?
View unanswered posts
View posts from last 24 hours

 
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Gentoo on Sparc
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
ashu69
n00b
n00b


Joined: 09 Nov 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 1:41 am    Post subject: 2.6.6 on sparc64 blade 150, ati mach64: xfree or xorg? Reply with quote

Folks,

I used to run 2.4 and xorg and was never able to get beyond a measly
640x400 resolution with my ati mach64 on a sun blade150. Running
Solaris on the same box gives me 1152x900x76 easily. Having googled
on it for weeks and having gone thru uncountable emerge/edit xorg.conf / retry CTRL-ALT-+ cycles till my fingers bled, i gave up on it... :-(

It has been sometime and i have now upgraded to 2.6.6 and love this
kernel, particularly the part about how easily it builds and "feels" :) .
I am thinking about trying the old battle with my mach64 once again.
Pouring over the various posts on this, i can't figure out what to do
about X?

Would someone who has same/similar setup help me out here?

Right now my main worry is the resolution (i would love to get
even 1024x768x76) , though i plan to play with AGP/DRI et. el. later
if my chipset actually would allow that.

PS: I have already applied that "busid has 4 extra digits fix" to my
2.6.6 kernel, so xfree ought to be fine, at least on that point.

Really appreciate any pointers you can throw my way. Just put me on
the right path folks, i am willing to battle out the details.

Thanks,
-at
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
spam_
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 14 Jan 2004
Posts: 105
Location: /dev/null

PostPosted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 7:28 pm    Post subject: Re: 2.6.6 on sparc64 blade 150, ati mach64: xfree or xorg? Reply with quote

First of all, this belongs in the SPARC forum.

Look around a bit with the forum search, IIRC there are several threads detailing how to get the mach64 (PGX24 in particular) going. At least part of the problem, again IIRC, is that the reference clock on the Sun boards is not what the PC boards usually are, and you have to put the correct value into your X config file.

You won't get AGP support cause it isn't an AGP chip. DRI is also unlikely.

As for which version of X: go get the latest Xorg (6.8.x tree) - aside from the type5 keyboard being a real hassle with a 2.4 kernel (I finally got the right settings though) it's fine on sparc64. Creator/Creator3D/Elite3D support has a little bit of hardware 3D support even, something <=6.7.0 doesn't.

I'm using kernel 2.4.27 on an Ultra 10/Creator3D with Xorg 6.8.0 and it runs perfectly, with faster than pure software 3D rendering (~110 FPS in glxgears, pure software is ~45). The only reason I'm not using 2.6.x is I can't live without the cs4231 sound driver, which is broken in 2.6 kernels last I heard/tried.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ashu69
n00b
n00b


Joined: 09 Nov 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 9:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Appreciate the feedback. I went with the latest Xorg tree 6.8.x. It works fine, excpet
that the old problem remains, the ati driver wouldn't go for anything higher then
800x600. :(

Yes, i did notice the thing about reference_clock setting on non-x86 systems.
I tried all possible reference clocks (for my mach64 Rage 3D XL chipset), no help.
[I double checked in Xorg.0.log that the setting is recognized and accepted by the driver.]

Actually i am now begenning to think that this might have something to do with my
monitor after all. It is an old Sony GDM 20E20 and it is supposedly "multisync" or
"sync on green" or some such. So if the ATI driver does select something higher then
800x600, my monitor blanks out. PS: I do note that the ATI driver says that
"Using composite sync to work with input frequencies", so that tells me something,
(i am not sure just what).... Perhaps that the driver IS able to work with such
monitors? I don't know...

The damndest thing is, if i run Solaris on the same box, it works fine (gives me
1152x900).

I am running out of ideas, should i mess with my monitor in some fashion?
Would the ATI driver in xfree do any better?

Thanks,
-at
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
spam_
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 14 Jan 2004
Posts: 105
Location: /dev/null

PostPosted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 2:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, X.org is just a fork of XFree just before the license change, so the driver in XFree likely isn't any better (it could be worse). If it works on Solaris, and others have it working on Linux, then that thing should run fine.

The csync note from the driver sounds correct, because Sun monitors usually support csync if nothing else. Sync on green is ancient and hasn't been used since the Sun bwtwo cards IIRC.

Can you post the bit from the log file where the ATI driver figures out the available resolutions? It usually gives reasons for each resolution it finds invalid.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ashu69
n00b
n00b


Joined: 09 Nov 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 7:09 am    Post subject: It worked! Reply with quote

Actually Spam, IT WORKED! :D :D
Turns out, it was indeed the reference_clock issue. I must have been
a bit careless and mixed in the changes i made to it with other changes to
xorg.conf, list of drivers in lib/modules/drivers/, different kernel
parameters and what not. Sorry for jumping the gun earlier when i
summarily noted that it didn't work. :oops:

Thanks!

Now, don't get mad, but how about AGP? My driver (ati) notes (in
Xorg.0.log) that "Shared PCI/AGP Mach64 in slot xxx detected.". It then
also mentions about 2 MMIO apertures it allocates and uses. Looking at
the some posts and googling around, it appears that Mac64 is indeed
supported with AGP, although i couldn't be sure whether that was only on
x86, or does that work on other archs as well.

I have seen what AGP/DRI can do when i tried YOPER on my PC. It
gives 200+ FPS in glxgears wheras Mandrake10.1 (which doesn't enable
AGP/DRI out-of-the-box) topped out on the same box at 75. That was
i686 with Nvidia driver, but i am willing to try it with ati on my sparc blade.

Is that just plain foolhardy, or do i have a chance?

Thanks again!
-at
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
spam_
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 14 Jan 2004
Posts: 105
Location: /dev/null

PostPosted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 5:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It works, great!

About AGP: AFAIK no Sun SPARC machines have ever had an AGP bus, and I know the Blade 150 certainly doesn't. Therefore, you won't get any AGP features out of the Mach64 chip becuase it's PCI, not AGP :-)

MMIO is correct for PCI, memory mapping isn't AGP specific. The reason the driver says AGP/PCI is that AGP appears to the system as just another PCI bus (but clocked faster), the driver really doesn't know which it is.

Side-note: newer Sun boxes (the Opterons? maybe a UltraSparc-IV even?) have or will have PCI-X support... mmmm, Sun boxes with a GeForce 6800 Ultra or two....

About DRI- if it works on x86, it might work on SPARC. Try it. The Gentoo DRI guide and your config files for a mach64 with DRI on x86 are two really good places to look. I was this close -> <- to having DRI working with a PCI 3DFX Voodoo Banshee card on my U10 (it needs some misc. patches that are on Gentoo's bugzilla). Non-DRI does work perfectly with it.

One thing is that if DRI with 3D acceleration is working you should be seeing a bit more than 200 fps... on a P4 1.4ghz with a GeForce 4 TI4200/AGP4x I get >=2000 FPS. I've seen some people here post about running glxgears with >6000fps results. On an ancient PCI TNT2M64 I know I had at least 500fps. Sounds like DRI really wasn't going, 50-200fps is the right range for pure software 3D.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ashu69
n00b
n00b


Joined: 09 Nov 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Thu Nov 11, 2004 8:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I will try the DRI stuff. I have done some more googling and it looks like mach64 DRI
is certainly supported in Xorg 6.8.x, defenitely on x86. And from what i understand
from your comments, DRI isn't arch specific (did i get that right?). So it ought to
work.

About the use of DRI giving me 200 FPS on my PC, i did check with glxinfo
it said "Direct Rendering: Yes", so i took that to mean it is working. What is more,
with Mandrake, glxinfo comes up "no" for DRI and sure enough, glxgears shows
75 FPS... These low number may have something to do with the fact that my PC is
an old Pentium 2, 650 MHz. But 75-->200 coupled with no--->yes from glxinfo was
a defenite giveaway for me.

Back to DRI on sparc blade. Looks like i would have to compile the mach64 modules
myself on SPARC. My first attempt actually was successful (compile-wise), but i ran into,
what seems to be a well known problem, with "virt_to_bus_not_defined_use_pci_map"
as an undefined symbol. I am weighing the pros and cons of whether to embark on this
hacking excersize of actually copying code for pci_map_*() from some other driver into
the latest mach64 driver or should i wait around for someone more familiar with all this to
port it to SPARC first?

I am using sources from
http://freedesktop.org/~dri/snapshots/mach64-20041110-linux.i386.tar.bz2

PS: Spam, not to forget your original comment, this thread does look SPARC
specific, how do i move it there?

Thanks,
-a
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
spam_
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 14 Jan 2004
Posts: 105
Location: /dev/null

PostPosted: Thu Nov 11, 2004 2:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ashu69 wrote:
I will try the DRI stuff. I have done some more googling and it looks like mach64 DRI
is certainly supported in Xorg 6.8.x, defenitely on x86. And from what i understand
from your comments, DRI isn't arch specific (did i get that right?). So it ought to
work.

Right.

ashu69 wrote:

About the use of DRI giving me 200 FPS on my PC, i did check with glxinfo
it said "Direct Rendering: Yes", so i took that to mean it is working. What is more,
with Mandrake, glxinfo comes up "no" for DRI and sure enough, glxgears shows
75 FPS... These low number may have something to do with the fact that my PC is
an old Pentium 2, 650 MHz. But 75-->200 coupled with no--->yes from glxinfo was
a defenite giveaway for me.

Ignoring the fact that Intel never made a P2-650 (heh), those numbers are quite believable, it really depends on what capabilities the 3D card has.

ashu69 wrote:

Back to DRI on sparc blade. Looks like i would have to compile the mach64 modules
myself on SPARC. My first attempt actually was successful (compile-wise), but i ran into,
what seems to be a well known problem, with "virt_to_bus_not_defined_use_pci_map"
as an undefined symbol. I am weighing the pros and cons of whether to embark on this
hacking excersize of actually copying code for pci_map_*() from some other driver into
the latest mach64 driver or should i wait around for someone more familiar with all this to
port it to SPARC first?

I am using sources from
http://freedesktop.org/~dri/snapshots/mach64-20041110-linux.i386.tar.bz2

Well, if you want DRI, go do it - it might be a long time before that patch is actually put into effect.

ashu69 wrote:

PS: Spam, not to forget your original comment, this thread does look SPARC
specific, how do i move it there?


I'm afraid you can't do that yourself - a moderator of the forums can though. If a mod notices, it'll get moved.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ashu69
n00b
n00b


Joined: 09 Nov 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 9:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thought i would sign off with an update of where i have been:

I came this close ==><== to getting DRI working with ATI Mach64. Got
the module to load, i was able to open the device just fine. It is the
ioctl()s which did me in. There is no support (even in the latest cvs
branch) for 32 bit ioctl()s on a 64 bit kernel (the only kind on a Blade).
So i said, OK, i would build 64-bit Xorg. Alas, can't do that either because
gcc (even the latest 3.4.4 version) doesn't support building 64 bit
binaries!

I am letting that battle slide for now. I will pick it up later...
I hope folks would post here if someone does get this going.

Thanks for your help and encouragement Spam. Hack on!

Over & out,
-a
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
brant
n00b
n00b


Joined: 12 Feb 2006
Posts: 5

PostPosted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So... I'm in the same position you were when you started this thread (same hardware, same resolution, same level of frustration)... what was the fix? :/
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ashu69
n00b
n00b


Joined: 09 Nov 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I no longer have the Sun Blade with me so i can't given you the
EXACT thing. But it was basically the reference_clock setting
in the device section for ati.

Something like

Option "reference_clock" "28.636 MHz"

Although i can't vouch for the exact value there. If you google around,
you would find that there are only a few valid values, so one of these ought
to work for your card.

Hope that helps and Best of luck,
-a
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
pilla
Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva


Joined: 07 Aug 2002
Posts: 7729
Location: Underworld

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 7:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Moved from Multimedia to Gentoo on Sparc.
_________________
"I'm just very selective about the reality I choose to accept." -- Calvin
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Gentoo on Sparc All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum