Radeon driver challenge - the Acer Ferrari 4000 laptop

[Marcus Schäfer]

Hi,

> If anyone who knows the Radeon driver is at the X.Org conference this week,
> and feels like debugging it on challenging hardware,  I'll have a Acer
> Ferrari 4000 with a Radeon Mobility X700 that seems to stump the Radeon 
> driver.
> (At least in part it seems the four outputs are confusing it - it has panel,
>  VGA port, DVI port & S-Video port.)
> 
> The problem that generates the most widespread complaint is that it can't
> seem to find it's builtin panel unless you put Option "MonitorLayout" 
> "LVDS,CRT"
> in it's xorg.conf file.   Without it, the probe logs these results, but
> leaves the panel black:
> 
> (--) Chipset ATI Mobility Radeon X700 (M26) (PCIE) found
> (II) RADEON(0): I2C bus "DDC" initialized.
> (II) RADEON(0): ATOM BIOS detected
> (II) RADEON(0): Port0: DDCType-0, DACType-0, TMDSType--1, ConnectorType-1
> (II) RADEON(0): Port1: DDCType-0, DACType--1, TMDSType--1, ConnectorType-7
> (II) RADEON(0):
> (II) RADEON(0): Primary:
>  Monitor   -- NONE
>  Connector -- VGA
>  DAC Type  -- Primary
>  TMDS Type -- NONE
>  DDC Type  -- NONE
> (II) RADEON(0): Secondary:
>  Monitor   -- NONE
>  Connector -- LVDS
>  DAC Type  -- Unknown
>  TMDS Type -- NONE
>  DDC Type  -- NONE
> (II) RADEON(0): ref_freq: 2700, min_pll: 20000, max_pll: 50000, xclk: 
> 40000, sclk: 358.000000, mclk: 345.000000
> (II) RADEON(0): PLL parameters: rf=2700 rd=7 min=20000 max=50000; xclk=40000
> (WW) RADEON(0): Failed to detect secondary monitor, MergedFB/Clone mode 
> disabled
> 
> You can find a number of reports of this when searching for "Ferrari 4000 
> Xorg"
> in google, including:
> 	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5473
> 	http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~weckerl/ferrari_ubuntu_64.html#graphics
> 
> Other issues with it include:
> 
> 	- Inability to use external monitor if you plug in the connector
> 	  after power-on if you have newer BIOS versions installed.
> 
> 	- Getting the DVI to do something other than Panelsize regardless
> 	  of the Mode setting (so when switching to 1280x1024 on an
> 	  external DVI connector you get 1280x1024 stretched to 1680x1050
> 	  by the Ferrari scaled back to 1280x1024 again by the monitor)

yes it's tricky, we had the same laptop here to get it running. it
works but it requires the option MonitorLayout to be set in any
case which means in a single and dualmode configuration. To get the
panel working you have to set:

	Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS"

if you are using MergedFB to use the secondary channel you should
setup

	Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,CRT"

Regards
Marcus
-- 
 Public Key available
 -------------------------------------------------------
 Marcus Schäfer (Res. & Dev.)   SUSE LINUX Products GmbH
 Tel: 0911-740 53 0             Maxfeldstrasse 5
 FAX: 0911-740 53 479           D-90409 Nürnberg
 http://www.suse.de             Germany
 -------------------------------------------------------