Xorg 7.0 RC0 on powerbook yields garbled text

[Alex Deucher]

On 8/4/05, Greg Roth <roth at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> > the r300 dri driver is the 3d driver for r3/4xx hardware.  All radeon
> > hardware is handled by the radeon driver for 2d and modes.
> >
> > Alex
> >
> 
> I suppose this is where my experience runs a little thin. My
> understanding is that each new ATI driver uses the previous driver for
> certain operations. Are you alluding to the fact that the r300 driver
> employs the radeon driver for 2d? I don't know what you mean by "modes".

yes.  the "radeon" driver handles 2d, Xv, etc. for all radeon chips. 
By modes I mean the display mode setup and output control, like
setting up 1024x768 on a DVI port or 1280x1024 on the primary DAC.

> My powerbook has a radeon 9600, which is a r350 chip. I conclude it
> should be a cantidate for use with the r300 driver. I interpret this to
> mean that I should be able to put "r300" in the Driver line of the Device
> section of my xorg.conf and get shiny happy 3D performance as a result.

not quite.  you'd still specify radeon in your xorg.conf since the
"radeon" driver is what handles the basic set up of the card for all
radeon chips.

> Currently, doing so produces an error that states the driver
> is not found. This is to be expected since the r300 shows up in source
> and not in the driver directory. I am using "radeon" there instead. That's
>  what I mean by using radeon and not r300.

you'd never use r300 for a device driver in your xorg.conf.  There are
three components to the driver architecture:

1. DDX - 2d driver; handles card setup, mode/output control, and Xv. 
radeon_drv.(s)o for all radeon chips; resides in
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers
Driver is maintained in xorg cvs

2. DRI library - 3d driver; sets up the 3d engine and build the 3d
pipeline.  provides an openGL interface to the 3d engine.  r300_dri.so
for r3/4xx chips, r200_dri.so for r2xx chips and radeon_dri.so for
r100 chips; reside in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri
Driver is maintained in mesa cvs

3. DRM - a kernel module that provides secure multiplexed access to
the card for  use by the 3d and optionally 2d engines for command
submission, DMA, interrupt handling, etc. radeon.(k)o for all radeon
chips.  resides in your kernel module tree.
Driver is maintained in dri cvs

> If I can, I'd like to enable this driver, but, as I said, it doesn't seem
> to be compiling. The r300.sourceforge.net site is a bit low on details as
> to how to coerce this driver to be compiled and installed. I've poked at
> the problem myself, but I won't have time to try again until the weekend.
> Any nudges in the right direction would be appreciated, but are not
> expected. I think, given time, I can surmount this problem myself. If that
> proves to be overconfident, you may hear from me again, or I'll just wait
> until RC1, RC0.5, or whatever designation the next pre-release is given.

Building instructions for all three parts:
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Building

> 
> Greg
>