graphics corruption/hardlock with Radeon Mobility 9600

[Alex Deucher]

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Pedro R <eusou15 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> hello
>
> i've been having major problems with any version of Xorg above 7.2. I had openSUSE 10.3 running on my system for a year and a half when i decided to upgrade to 11.1. After upgrading, gdm hardlocks and show corrupted graphics. So i decided to try various distributions: ZenWalk, gentoo, fedora, debian lenny, etc. The same happens in all of them: at first boot into gdm, it locks up completely - ctrl + alt + del, ctrl + fX, even quickly pressing and depressing the power button doesn't work.
>
> Only openSUSE 10.3 (xorg 7.2) and Debian etch (7.1) work flawlessly. I've pinned down this problem to either a xorg, xorg-radeon or gdm bug, since Windows runs fine with 3D acceleration.
>
> Any ideas? I'm desperate. Never thought Windows would run on a machine where Linux doesn't!

It's probably AGP related.  Does adding this option to the device
section of your xorg.conf help?

Option "AGPMode" "x"

Where x = 1 or 2 or 4 or 8.

Some chipset/GPU combinations only work in certain modes.  If none of
those work, try:
Option "BusType" "PCI"

Alex