Re: [Mesa3d-users] Update: mach64 kernel modules for 2.6.26 kernel

[Chris J. <cjn...@gm...>]

On Fri, Apr 03, 2009 at 11:53:22AM EDT, c3kkos wrote:
> 
> Ok i've got the same here
> 
> old Acer Travelmate 743tl
> 
> with the ugly mach64 chip on it. the M, agp 2x version......

Same as me, it's the agp version of the card/chip.

Only system where I got dri to work on this hardware was debian sarge
with a 2.4 kernel and I do remember that I needed to load the agpgart
kernel module prior to loading the mach64 kernel module.

Two other things that I learned the hard way was that I needed was to
run X with 16-bit color and a screen resolution that was compatible
with the Mach64's miserly memory. 

My laptop's LCD's native resolution is 1400x1050 but in order to get dri
to work, I had to downgrade to 1024x768.

Since I never got it to work on debian "etch" on the same laptop, I
still have this old "sarge" system on a separate partition.

> i've compilated my own kernel module from the git source.. and that
> spits out two .ko listed in:

> /lib/modules/'uname -r'/kernel/drivers/char/drm/drm.ko && mach64.ko

> well.. everything seems to run fine.. those modules loads with NO
> PROBLEMS at all..

[..]

> Straight to the point:

> at this time, it seems that DRM for mach64 + Xorg cause a kernel panic
> (no logs are created from X, so i think that happens BEFORE the
> graphical server loads up)

In any event, please forget everything I said regarding ubuntu. 

I don't understand what the ubuntu packagers did in this respect, but
having had the time to look more closely at the output of glxinfo, I
noticed that although it says "direct rendering: yes" it also has
something that doesn't look promising a few lines down: "OpenGL
Renderer: Software Rasterizer". Hmm...

So, I rebooted to my old sarge system and sure enough, glxinfo says:
"Direct Rendering: Yes" _but_ it also says: "OpenGL Renderer: Mesa DRI
Mach64".

Not knowing exactly what this glxinfo renderer stuff really means, I
thought I'd run a few "tests" with some xscreensaver stuff (antinspect,
glmatrix, blocktube, dangerball, GLForestFire.. etc.) as well as
glxgears  on both my old sarge system and the ubuntu system (on the same
multi-boot laptop) and compare the results. 

Well, the difference was immediately noticeable and also quite
measurable, at least if you trust the -fps options of these programs.

Basically, on my old sarge system I was consistently getting FPS rates
that were roughly 5+ times higher than on the ubuntu system where dri is
supposedly enabled. True, I'm probably running different versions of
these programs, since the stuff in the sarge repositories must be about
5 years older than the ubuntur stuff.. but all the same, there does seem
to be a pattern.

As an example, at the same color depth, same resolution, glxgears is
just short of 300 FPS on my old debian sarge system. When I ran it on
ubuntu, it did about 56 FPS..!

So, to paraphrase what you said, I thought dri was a matter of 1, you
have it, or 0 you don't.. 

Not so, the ubuntu packagers seem to have it "half-enabled".

:-)

> my kernel is 2.6.29 on a Debian box.   COME ON BOYS LET'S TRY TO SOLVE
> THIS!!

+1

The "ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility P/M AGP 2x (rev 64)" is probably
not powerful enough to make much difference for a lot of stuff, even
with dri fully (?) enabled, but on my old "sarge" system I was able to
play (or demo) Heretic II with all textures and visual effects enabled
via the "GL renderer" and Tuxracer was tolerably responsive.. 

So, even though getting this to work is not one of my priorities, I
would really like to understand this stuff a little better and I _do_
wish someone knowledgeable could spare a couple of minutes and give us a
few pointers.

Thanks,

CJ