Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

tronkel · Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 1059 Location: Vienna Austria

This worked fine for me in versions up to 4.2.1 I think.

Fails with the latest ppup-417 though using kernel 2.6.30.1

My video card is an ATI Radeon 3450

Hope it can be fixed!

MU · Posted: Sat 18 Jul 2009, 11:10 Post subject:

you could download and run the latest Catalyst driver from http://ati.com.
You need to have a devx.sfs, so that the installer can compile the kernelmodule.

Note: the latest driver 9.4/9.5 no longer supports older cards.
If your card is older than a HD2000, you need driver 9.3.

For the HD3450, driver 9.5 shall work.
http://support.amd.com/de/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.5&lang=English

Mark

tronkel · Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 1059 Location: Vienna Austria

Hi Mark

Thanks for the help with the ATI card.

Compiled and installed fine using the latest ATI proprietary 9.6 version on Puppy4 417 Alpha 1

On certain websites (including this forum) scrolling is slow. One can actually see the individual frames during scrolling.

Do you perhaps know how to tweak the driver or Xorg settings so that this is improved? Or maybe it would be possible to install some extra XORG packages?

MU · Posted: Sun 19 Jul 2009, 06:16 Post subject:

No idea.
But if 8-12 (the pet for Puppy 4.12) worked better with your card, you should try to comple that one.
The Ati drivers undergo heavy changes, sometimes older drivers work better with certain chips.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/8-12/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx

But also check out, which browser you use.
E.g. I somewhere I had read, that firefox 3.5 has problems with scrolling for some people.
So if seamonkey works fine, it will be a browserspecific issue not related to the graficsdrivers.

Mark

tronkel · Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 1059 Location: Vienna Austria

Hi MU

I tried installing the 8.12 Version from the AMD website, but still no success. The original ATI 8.12 pet also did not work.

I thought therefore that this could be a kernel problem with the 2.6.30.1 kernel. So I then tried pup4-471 Alpha 1 again, but this time using the 2.6.25.16 kernel supplied by Barry.

Your ATI-Catalyst pet v 8.12 now works. Scrolling is OK too.

Therefore it looks as if it will be necessary to retain this older version for a while until a build if this driver is successfully compiled for the later kernel 2.6.30.1

Thanks for all the help in the meantime.

MU · Posted: Sun 19 Jul 2009, 12:05 Post subject:

I see, yes, I also encountered problems to compile it in a newer kernel. I had forgotten about that.
I fear, there will be no update for the new Kernel for driver 8-12.
Ati has a new concept, I will try to summarize it.

With 9.4 and newer, only HD2000 and newer chips are supported.
So the old drivers like 8-12 are no longer maintained.
Like this, Ati wants to clean up the messy catalyst drivers from old code.

Instead, Ati now has released internal sourcecodes to the xorg project.
So xorg now is able, to add 3D support to the inbuilt xorg drivers. (in the past, only very old chips like the radeon 9250 had 3D in xorg, and now, also more recent chips can get that support).
First experimental 3D for the more modern chips is already available, but not really usable yet:

german:
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2009/14411.html

english:
http://jbridgman.livejournal.com/945.html

What does this mean in practise for your 3450?
1.) hope, that Ati fixes the scrolling issue in one of the next 9.x releases
2.) hope, that soon the xorg drivers have a good working 3D support for your chip, so that you can use those instead of the catalyst drivers.

Mark

MU · Posted: Sun 19 Jul 2009, 12:14 Post subject:

Sometimes one finds hints in these forums:
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=19

Bridgman and other Ati developers are active there.
When a new driver is released, often bugs are reported, so you might find a solution for the scrolling issue with driver 9.x there.

Mark

tronkel · Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 1059 Location: Vienna Austria

Hi Mark

They seem to be pessimistic there about the prospects for good ATI support for the 2.6.30 kernel series.

A lot of them are saying there that they are going to give up on ATI proprietary stuff and move over to nVidia instead.

Do you by any chance know if open source ATI drivers are available for the 2.6.30 kernel and if so, where the best place is to download them?

MU · Posted: Sun 19 Jul 2009, 12:54 Post subject:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=39154&start=75

There in the first message I describe, how I compiled the xorg radeon drivers in Ultrapup.

But they will not have usable 3D support!

Mark

tronkel · Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 1059 Location: Vienna Austria

Ok danke fürs Info Mark!

bin bereit vorübergehend 3D zu verzichten. Ich versuche es selbst zu
kompilieren.

Danke nochmals.

MU · Posted: Sun 19 Jul 2009, 13:36 Post subject:

Ok.
Please take in account, that my message is from april.
Some files might have newer releases.
E.g.
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/individual/driver/xf86-video-ati-6.12.2.tar.gz

You can look that up by browsing the downloadfolder, where it is located, like:
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/individual/driver/

You might not need to compile libdrm, as woof might contain already very new libraries.
But I am not certain about it.

Grüße, Mark