Re: [Dri-devel] Radeon 8500 support???

[Kevin E M. <ke...@ke...>]

On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 05:15:25PM +0100, José Fonseca wrote:
> Jan,
> 
> On 2002.05.20 16:42 Jan Schmidt wrote:
> > <quote who="Jos? Fonseca">
> > 
> > > On 2002.05.20 12:30 Martin Spott wrote:
> > > >As this _is_ a FAQ it's already listet in the appropriate document.
> > > >Wonder
> > > >how it is called, this document ? We call it "FAQ".
> > > >
> > >
> > > There are two FAQs documents in the DRI website. This question it's
> > > addressed in the "Developer's FAQ"
> > > (http://dri.sourceforge.net/doc/faq/hardware.html#RADEON-8500-PLANS),
> > > which perhaps isn't as straightforward to find as the general DRI FAQ.
> > >
> > 
> > On the other hand, this has been unchanged in the FAQ for 3 months now
> > (longer?)...
> > 
> 
> I spoke with Kevin Martin three weeks ago on the IRC meeting and it's 
> still accurate regarding him. Keith's TCL work for radeon is already on 
> the tcl-0-0-branch.

I would really like to get back to work on the Radeon 8500 3D code
again, but finding time to do that has been difficult.  I know people
are very eager to see that work completed, but for the next few weeks
(until mid-June), I just don't have any spare cycles to work on it.

> > Is the mentioned development occurring on a side branch of the DRI cvs
> > tree?
> > If so, I haven't been able to spot it. If not, can a branch be created?
> 
> No. It's being developed privately by Kevin but he said he would start a 
> branch eventually. He had been more concentrated in the 2D driver until 
> then but there is a beggining of a 3D AFAIK which he would start to look 
> into again.

Right now, I'm still cleaning up the Radeon 2D driver (along with ATI).
That work is progressing, but there are some more issues to work out
before I'm ready to say that code is good enough for the next XFree86
release.  This is my first priority.  Once the 2D driver is in shape, I
will get back to the 8500 3D code.  However, if someone else has the
time and the necessary background, they are welcome to work on the 8500.
Right now, what I've done is still based too much on ATI's SDK code,
which I cannot check in.

A while back Ani Joshi was also working on the 8500 and got a drm driver
working.  Ani, have you had time to work on it further?

> > 
> > I'm still coming up to speed on the dri codebase, but I am also waiting
> > to
> > get my hands on some 8500 3D code to help bugfix/develop, however unready
> > for real use it is.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > J.
> 
> So far you're the first person who mentioned helping. One of the reasons 
> for the slow development is that Kevin has been doing this on his spare 
> time only. Your interest changes both things. If he doesn't reply in the 
> meanwhile, contact him showing your interest and asking for a status 
> update. You can get his sourceforge email acount in the DRI project page.

If someone wants to update the status page with this new info, please
feel free to do so.

Also, I realize that it is difficult to get the specs/SDK since those of
us that have them are not allowed to redistribute them and ATI wants you
to demonstrate your interest and ability before they give you access.
The best suggestions that I have are to (1) start asking technical
questions about the source code here on dri-devel and/or (2) submit some
patches to fix problems that you find.  Others have done this and are
gaining a good working knowledge of the codebase (BTW, I'm _very_
pleased to see this happening!).  Concentrate on the DRI code since
working without specs on the driver code can be rather daunting.  You
can then use this to help convince ATI to release the specs to you.

Hope this helps,
Kevin