Evergreen success story!

[Alex Deucher]

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Dave Witbrodt <dawitbro at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Thanks especially to David Airlie for his 'drm-radeon-testing' branch,
> and Alex Deucher for his introductory Evergreen support.
>
> I tried a week ago, and when I got black screens I gave up too quickly
> and pulled the HD 5750, replacing it with my slightly older HD 4850.
> This time I also got a black screen, but (as before) Windows Vista works
> perfectly, so I know the hardware is not defective.
>
> As it turns out, I use a KVM device that allows me to switch between 4
> machines using Dsub VGA connectors.  There are no VGA connectors on this
> HD 5750, so I was using a DVI-to-Dsub converter that came with the card
> so I could continue to switch between machines.  After logging in via
> SSH, and making sure I saved 'dmesg' and 'Xorg.0.log', I thought about
> that converter possibly messing up the situation.
>
> I turned the monitor off, plugged in a DVI cable, and rebooted.  Voila!
>  Working KMS!  No acceleration, of course, but I'm just glad to see the
> ball toward open source Evergreen support starting to roll!  Switching
> between X and VT works fine, as well.  And (unlike last week) I am
> getting the proper 1920x1200 resolution for my monitor.
>
> I have copies of 'dmesg' and 'Xorg.0.log' for both cases:  WITH and
> WITHOUT the converter.  The "radeon" driver seemed to be able to read
> the monitor info just fine even with the converter, but somehow DRM
> couldn't do the same -- the black screen occurs when the kernel switches
> from BIOS VGA to KMS radeondrmfb, and running X doesn't overcome the
> problem.  Is it too early with regard to Evergreen support to file a bug
> report?  I wouldn't even know what to file the bug against:  DRM in
> 'drm-radeon-testing', I suppose.
>

KVMs are always trouble.  If you use one, your best bet is to force an
X configuration via config file as they often prevent the driver from
detecting any outputs.  The UMS driver lights up one of the ports if
nothing is detected, you just happened to get lucky that it lit up the
right port for you, with KMS, we don't.

Alex

>
> Now, after several hard months of getting acceleration to work on my HD
> 4850, I have a hard decision to make:  leave the HD 5750 installed (no
> accel), or replace it with the HD 4850 (lots of accel) until the next
> round of support starts to appear?
>
>
> Much thanks,
> Dave W.
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