Hi, got a 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550 Series] card and tried to use KMS and radeon since its in the mainline tree but got no luck yet. Resolution change does work and X is working too but there are some "bugs" which makes it unusable. 1. Console/Screen does blank from time to time - i can switch to first tty and wait and seeing the screen going blank for seconds and reappearing few seconds later. It does this a few times per minute. Using X it appears to be not that often but still happening. 2. In X Screen does have some black lines running over the screen every time - reading some text on white background is really hard because of these black lines running through the screen everytime, hope you know what i mean - can't make a screenshot - this may not be related to KMS at all and i have to talk to Xorg guys for this error - please tell me - don't know where to report this one best. The only configuration which is usable in terms of you can do your work >1 hour is to disable KMS and using the "old" radeonhd Xorg driver - which does work fine and without those "glitches". Any help or information i can provide to make radeon "work" like radeonhd?
Additional info, graphics chip is an RV516: [ 59807.498] (II) RADEONHD(0): Card not in database: 0x7187:0x1028:0x0402; using generic modesetting. [ 59807.498] (--) RADEONHD(0): Detected an RV516 on an unidentified card
Does booting with radeon.new_pll=0 on your kernel command line help? Additionally, can you try Dave's drm-next branch? It has some other pll changes. http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/airlied/drm-2.6.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/drm-next
Another thing to try assuming this is a digital monitor (DVI or HDMI): xrandr --output <output> --set coherent 0
Thanks Alex for those hints. radeon.new_pll=0 makes the first problem go away, no screen blanking anymore yet. The second one is still there - not that often as before the adding the pll boot parameter but still there. Using your second hint with xrandr --output DVI-0 --set coherent 0 seems to help with this, no more black lines on my screen. Nice. I'll report again in one or two days of working if the problems are really gone - but the first impression looks promising - using both, new_pll=0 and xrandr coherent = 0 seems to make things work.
Till now all is working, guess this is gone with those 2 workarounds. Thanks.
The old pll code will be the default in 2.6.37, so in 2.6.37, you'll just need to adjust the coherent option.
Is there any way to get KMS working without X? Without the coherent option my screen blanks on/off - i cant work with it. I need to run X and hava to issue (via xdg autostart e.g.) the xrandr command to be able to work. Using only the console is not possible - any hint here? Is there a KMS option which does the same?
(In reply to comment #7) > Is there any way to get KMS working without X? Are things working any better with 2.6.38? > Without the coherent option my screen blanks on/off - i cant work with it. > I need to run X and hava to issue (via xdg autostart e.g.) the xrandr command > to be able to work. > Using only the console is not possible - any hint here? Is there a KMS option > which does the same? No one has written a sysfs interface to change connector attributes yet. It would be useful though. Another alternative would be to write a command line app that uses the same ioctls X uses to change the attributes.
I am using 2.6.38.2 (2.6.38-7 natty build) and things does not work better - monitor still blanks all the time around until coherent is set. Oh i guess its beyond my "skills" to write such a command line app :-| or export those attributes to sysfs - although it would be nice to have either one of those options.