[CALUG] ATI Radeon 2100-based graphics - driver or alternative video card?

[Ed Browne]

Hi Bryan,
       Thanks very much for that magisterial explanation of what the
heck is going on with that stuff.  Thanks especially for the short
answer - I added the "radeon.modeset=0" and (after a little bit
of dpkg fixing up of broken packages) it works just fine.  Thanks
very much!

Cheers - Ed 



----- Original Message ----
> From: Bryan J. Smith <thebs413 at yahoo.com>
> To: Ed Browne <edward_d_browne at yahoo.com>; calug at unknownlamer.org
> Sent: Mon, July 26, 2010 8:03:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [CALUG] ATI Radeon 2100-based graphics - driver or alternative 
>video card?
> 
> The AMD 740G is a 55nm die shrink from the 80nm 690G, and little changes on  
>the
> IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) side of things.  It's the same  
>X1250-HD2100
> design.
> 
> There is bad news, good news and then more bad  news that can be mitigated.
> 
> The bad news is that AMD stopped supporting  this driver in the proprietary 
> driver.
> There are always endless OEM  changes with IGPs, and I'm sure AMD tired of it.
> I've seen my share with the  nForce/GeForce Go/M/etc... series on notebooks 
>over
> the years, although  nVidia does its best to deal with vendor nuiances, and I 
> would
> argue they  do a far, far better job than on Windows.  I.e., my Gateway 
>P-7811FX
> has  issues with the generic nForce/GeForce 9M series Windows drivers,  
>requires
> the Gateway-specific ones, but the generic nVidia Linux drivers  update just 
> fine.
> 
> The good news is that the 690G/740G has full  support in the open source 
world,
> including 3D, and advanced  feature-framebuffer support.  I have a refurbished
> Gateway LT-3101u  myself (bought almost a year ago for $200), the earlier
> AMD 740G + 1.2GHz  combination that kicks the newer Intel chipset + Core Solo
> Gateway option in  3D performance and other things (power is about the same,
> the 55nm 740G  doesn't suck down much juice).  Distributions over the last few
> years  have the support, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc...  The newer distros even have  
>more
> advanced support for the IGP.
> 
> So the additional bad news, which  can be mitigated, is that newer Kernel Mode 

> Setting
> (KMS) framebuffer  doesn't handle these AMD-ATI IGPs well.  There are some 
> firmware-
> init issues before the Linux kernel starts that seems to set  them up wrong.  
>The 
>
> solution
> is to disable KMS, which causes the  init to fall back to VESA modes for just 
>the 
>
> boot
> portion (nice logo  screen for init).  Once X starts, its the fully accelerated 
>
> driver.
> 
> One of these two boot time o
 
 [ Ack, hit "send" before done ]

> 
> Short answer ...
> 
> Try one of these  two boot options (edit your "append" line in GRUB):  
>    "nomodeset"
> or
>   "radeon.modeset=0"
> 
> I believe I'm using the  latter on my Gateway LT-3101u netbook, but I don't 
>have
> it in front of me to  check.  I will also look at what "vga=" line I'm throwing 
>
> at boot  as
> well, so you still get a solid VESA pixel count.  My 11.6" netbook  has a 
> 1366x768
> LCD IIRC, so I believe I boot with a 1024x768 VESA mode  (that gets 
stretched).
> 
> 
> -- Bryan
> 
> P.S.  I'm still using my  nVidia cards from years ago, both open source 
>(2D-only)
> and closed source  (full 3D -- legacy drivers are still updated by nVidia for 
> newer
> kernels,  even my old circa early 2001 GeForce Go) drivers, so there's really 
>no
> such  thing as "old."  The GPU support in Linux tends to be perpetual,  
because
> there are always old cores being supported in newer IGP and related,  OEM
> products.  So no reason to upgrade.
> 
> Of course, AMD-ATI Radeon  4000 (and even some 5000) series cards are often
> $10-25 after rebates,  sometimes out-the-door with coupon.
> 

> 
> 
> 
> -----  Original Message ----
> From: Ed Browne <edward_d_browne at yahoo.com>
> To: calug at unknownlamer.org
> Sent: Mon,  July 26, 2010 12:08:23 PM
> Subject: [CALUG] ATI Radeon 2100-based graphics -  driver or alternative video 

> card?
> 
> I have unfortunately an AMD 740G  MoBo with integrated ATI Radeon 
> 2100-based graphics.  It worked fine  with Ubuntu 8.04, and pretty
> well with 9.04, but not at all with 10.04.   According to all I've found 
> on the web, I tried de-installing the drivers  that came with the distro,
> and using the proprietary one provided by  AMD.  I think it was never
> going to work, because it seems they've  discontinued support for
> any distro beyond February 2009 - and in fact the  install fails with
> a cryptic error about a version:
> 
> Error:  ./default_policy.sh does not support  version
> default:v2:i686:lib::none:2.6.32-23-generic; make sure that the  version 
> is being correctly set by --iscurrentdistro
> 
> 
> Anyway, just  to check - is there in fact anyway to operate this
> graphics chipset with  Ubuntu 10.04?  If not, can anyone recommend
> a cheap PCI-e video card  that might be supportable for longer than
> the <2yrs I got out of this  one?
> 
> Thanks very much - Ed 
> 
> 
>       
> 
> 
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