[AGP] rv200 and rv250 unusable absent 'agp=off'

[Felix Miata]

AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3000+
Fresh installation on resurrected MSI K8MM-V MS-7142 motherboard.
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/K8MMV.html
openSUSE Tumbleweed, kernel 4.10.4, server 1.19.3, ati driver 7.9.0

Mouse cursor is about all that can be counted on. Sometimes an app like Xterm 
can be started, but text is smeared if it appears at all. As likely as not, the 
IceWM desktop mostly paints, and nothing more is possible, sometimes to the 
point even remote login cannot force reboot or kill X. The following is the tail 
of dmesg with drm.drm_debug=1 on cmdline (without it, no clues show up in dmesg 
or Xorg.0.log) using RV250/M9 GL [Mobility FireGL 9000/Radeon 9000 (similar 
results if I swap the RV200 for the RV250)(journal looks about the same):

[   89.691515] Key type id_legacy registered
[  319.776019] radeon 0000:01:00.0: ring 0 stalled for more than 10240msec
[  319.776024] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GPU lockup (current fence id 
0x0000000000000188 last fence id 0x0000000000000189 on ring 0)
[  319.942304] radeon: wait for empty RBBM fifo failed ! Bad things might happen.
[  320.104030] Failed to wait GUI idle while programming pipes. Bad things might 
happen.
[  320.105042] radeon 0000:01:00.0: Saved 31 dwords of commands on ring 0.
[  320.105051] radeon 0000:01:00.0: (r100_asic_reset:2568) RBBM_STATUS=0x8031C100
[  320.607052] radeon 0000:01:00.0: (r100_asic_reset:2589) RBBM_STATUS=0x80010140
[  321.104586] radeon 0000:01:00.0: (r100_asic_reset:2597) RBBM_STATUS=0x00000140
[  321.104607] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GPU reset succeed
[  321.104609] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GPU reset succeeded, trying to resume
[  321.126699] radeon 0000:01:00.0: WB disabled
[  321.126706] radeon 0000:01:00.0: fence driver on ring 0 use gpu addr 
0x00000000d0000000 and cpu addr 0xffffbfe840381000
[  321.126766] [drm] radeon: ring at 0x00000000D0001000
[  321.126787] [drm] ring test succeeded in 1 usecs
[  322.208113] [drm:r100_ib_test [radeon]] *ERROR* radeon: fence wait timed out.
[  322.208163] [drm:radeon_ib_ring_tests [radeon]] *ERROR* radeon: failed 
testing IB on GFX ring (-110).

Log:
http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Linux/Xorg/xorg.0.log-k8mmv-201703260430

Is there something, other than the illogical 'agp=off' cmdline option, that can 
be done to make these cards usable? Time to file a new bug? I don't see any that 
match in a Driver / ATI, Drivers/DRI/r200 search.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/