Help: i810 Graphics accel

[tomalakborg]

Hey guys - I'm new to gentoo, and I love the system. Portage is just wonderful.

Here's the problem- I've been playing around with getting my integrated, PCI, piece-of-junk, 16mb *max* shared memory intel i810 graphics chip to have glx and dri. So far I've learned that it only liked 16 bit color depth, not to use the kernel's built in dri, and install x11-drm.

Here's my xorg.conf:

Code: Select all

Section "ServerLayout"
        /* my server layout, it works */
EndSection

Section "Files"
         /* paths to fonts */
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "dri"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "record"
        Load  "xtrap"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "type1"
        Load  "freetype"
        Load  "GLcore"
        Load  "bitmap"
        Load  "ddc"
        Load  "vbe"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
        ModelName    "Monitor Model"
        HorizSync   30 - 70
        VertRefresh 50-160
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Option     "DRI"        "True"
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "i810"
        VendorName  "Intel Corp."
        BoardName   "82810E DC-133 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller]"
        BusID       "PCI:0:1:0"
        VideoRAM 16384
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen0"
    Device      "Card0"
    Monitor     "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth 16

    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes       "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
         Mode 0666
EndSection

Now how I configured my kernel. I noticed that AGPgart needs framebuffer support modulized, but the i810fb only works for me integrated. X didin't work either way, so I have it integrated now.

I have *nothing* enabled under character devices. I'm sure I should probably get something in there going, but I don't know what, and I was just thrashing before - some direction is needed.
In framebuffer support:

Code: Select all

 <*> Support for frame buffer devices 
 <*> Intel 810/815 support (EXPERIMENTAL)                                                                
      [*]   use VESA Generalized Timing Formula                                                             
      [*]     Enable DDC Support

At first I tried to follow a gentoo-handbook guide on dri, but it rather left me in the dust. I was never able to get glxinfo to tell me the good news, and the loading of i810 dri module failed. I have since unmerged the x11-drm package, since a friend tried to manually edit some source and failed.

If anyone has been able to do this themselves and get stuff like tuxracer running, I would love to know your methodology. Likewise, if anyone sees where I should be going with this - please let me know.

Thanx in advance;[/code] - Bill

[diablo93]

My steps were this with gentoo-sources 2.6.16 and modular x (although 6.9 should have worked too) it just must be the new xserver, i810 support isn't supported on 6.8.x xorg:

compile agpgart into the kernel so that i915 driver could be selected
select both the intel video card packages in the video driver section and make them modules, they won't need loaded at boot, X will modprobe them when it starts

make sure that the kernel drm module is NOT installed
install the x11-drm package, this will handle the direct rendering in place of the kernel drm that we took out

hope this at least gives you some ideas on things to look at, it should at least give you some things to check out.

[cartpullerjack]

i810 isn't compatible with glx :\. DRI is the best you'll be able to do.

I ran a machine with i810 and a 2.4 kernel a few years back. I'm not sure about getting framebuffers working, but to get DRI working, you only need to enable DRM* in the kernel, then enable DRI specifically for i810, and set up your xorg.conf to load it. I'm pretty sure most of that is in character devices somewhere.

*) DRM = Direct Rendering Manager, not Digitial Rights Management
DRI = Direct Rendering Interface.

____

What might be simpler and nicer, would be to grab an nVidia PCI card off of newegg or something. Those will have GL, will be decently fast (a LOT faster than i810), and fairly cheap (~$20-$30)

[tomalakborg]

cpjack- Thanx for the info!

A few more things...
Do I need agpgart enabled? It's a pci card, so I'm not sure on that one.

A friend may have a pci Geforce 5200 for me, and for cheap. I will definitly look into getting that rigged up. If that gets hooked up, I've seen ways of enabling xinerama, and using two displays. How will acceleration work in a setup like this? (If monitor 1 is on the nvidia, and 2 is on the i810)

Will acceleration be enables (albeit at a lower setting) on both displays, or will only the nvidia display be able to run good stuff like tuxracer? Since this is going to be used soon as a recording box during some live shows, I'd ideally like the non accelerated display to show my recording software, and then let me play neverball on the glx display.

Thanks; -Bill

[cartpullerjack]

OI. If you're doing live recording, be careful about using GLX applications. You don't want to put any glitches into your channels because the processor was being monopolized by tuxracer or vendetta or half life or something. It might be a good idea to renice whatever recording application you're using real low, like to -18 or something. This is probably unsolicited advice, but if you're recording at a high bitrate, like something you intend to move onto a DAT at somepoint, you'll be a bit better off if you record to a hard drive that is entirely separate from where your /usr directory lies.

xinerama is kinda wonky when you're using to different types of graphics cards. If you use true xinerama, ie, where you're able to drag windows between monitors, then you won't be able to use GLX at all.

You can use two separate X servers, like :0.0 and :0.1, one for each monitor, and I think in that case you can use glx on one of them and not on the other, but you won't be able to drag windows between heads.

nVidia's proprietary driver includes a funny version of xinerama that allows you to run GLX on several heads at once, but they all have to be driven by nVidia cards. So you could get two PCI cards and do it that way (they don't even have to be the same kind, so I'm told), or you could get one that can do dual head. *Or*, you could get four dual head cards, and run 8 monitors simultaneuosly, booowahahaha.

[tomalakborg]

Lol, good call with the 8 heads at once.

So, I was able to get dri working (in 16bit mode only) by enabling it in the kernel and saying "F U!" to the x11-drm package in portage. The reason I didn't try this before was because the help page for the i810 dri option says it needs agp to work... well it doesn't considering I have a pci gfx card. So now I have integrated framebuffer support, integrated dri support, and thats it! Good times with small kernel images.

I should state the reason for the box - it's less of a recording box, and more of a give-bill-something-to-do box. My friend's band isn't that good, and he's thrilled at the possibility of a recording other than his buddy's tape recorder. So, I'm plugging 2 mics into this box and letting ardour do its thing- We'll worry about exporting to DAT later ;)

Given that the i810 with dri enabled works out alright, I'll probably stick to that. Now the graphics card is taking more of the load, I can run my lbreakout and sodoku without taxing the proc for display. It's no full glx support, but it's good enough. Should I decide to harvest a pci graphics card I'd most likely run that solo, and forget xinerama. Thanks for all the help!

-Bill