The ati petition

[Timothy Murphy]

On Saturday 04 September 2004 19:48, Lee Revell wrote:

> > I read this with a certain degree of jaundice,
> > since the ATI driver in the current Xorg
> > does not work with my Sony Picturebook (C1VFK)
> > which has an ATI Rage Mobility P.M graphic system
> > whereas the XFree86 driver in FC-1 worked perfectly.
>
> By 'current' do you mean the latest release candidate?  CVS?  The last
> official release?

I meant the most recent version provided with FC-2 
(after running "yum update").
According to "X -version" this is
============================================
Release Date: 18 December 2003
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 6.7
Build Operating System: Linux 2.4.21-14.ELsmp i686 [ELF]
Current Operating System: Linux william.murphy.ie 2.6.8.1 #1 Fri Aug 27 
22:56:21 IST 2004 i686
Build Date: 26 June 2004
============================================

I'd be more than happy to try compiling the CVS version,
if there was in fact any chance that my problem had been fixed.
But unfortunately I've seen no evidence that it has been looked at.

> Did you file a bug report?  It's not a bug if there's no bug report.

I did report it, as xorg bug 718 
<http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=718>

> Some users seem to think that every open source hacker has access to
> every single hardware device on the market.  If the previous driver
> worked, then there's a fix available, and the system works.

I'm not sure what you mean.
Are you saying that if it worked with the XFree86 version in FC-1
then there is "a fix available"?

> Can you provide more information that 'it doesn't work'?

If run with the config file that worked in FC-1,
with DefaultDepth 16, I get a large black oval
which gradually changes to a blank white screen.
There is no X error reported.

I have a collection of 17 xorg.confg's
following various suggestions that have been made,
but all have the same effect.
I have constructed an xorg.conf which works at 800x375x16bpp
but this is not entirely satisfactory on the very small Picturebook screen,
and I prefer to run it at 1024x480x8bpp.
[Under FC-1 and indeed all versions of RedHat for the last 2 or 3 years
it ran at 1024x480x16bpp or even (IIRC) 1024x480x24bpp.]

As I said before, if there is an introduction to compiling X
I would be happy to try;
and as ever, if anyone has any suggestions they will be gratefully received.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland