ATI Rage Mobility-M1 on Linux

[erogenousjones]

Can anyone point me to some worthwhile information about the ATI Rage Mobility-M1 on Linux? All the links I've found on google are several years old, and refer to drivers that are doubtless either obselete or included in my distro (Xubuntu) and so I'm using already.

If it's relevant, the machine I'm using is a 5-year old vaio laptop. (fx series)

Whatever driver my distro has assigned to this hardware works out of the box with Xubuntu, but it... well... it could be better. 2D stuff works nicely (including video) but anything 3D is a joke. I guess it's using some kind of generic driver or close-relative driver that covers standard 2D functions well, but doesn't support the 3D hardware. How do I find out what driver my machine is using?

Does there exist a Linux driver specifically for this hardware? I appreciate that reverse-engineering drivers for hardware with unpublished specs is quite a challenge, but maybe someone has written one, somewhere. If they have, I haven't found it yet, although I've heard that ATI are finally writing and releasng some Linux drivers. Is this hardware likely to be on their list, or are they only doing drivers for new hardware?

I'd be grateful for any help at all on this subject.

[JOPS]

Your distro already includes the driver but that chipset is painfully slow (as you said it's very old) even if you have 3D-acceleration enabled so don't expect much.

[erogenousjones]

Thanks for the reply.

I realise that it's old hardware, and I'm not trying to run modern games or compiz or anything like that, but 3D is definitely slower under linux than the same hardware ever was under XP. For example, some of the 3D-effect screensavers and music visualisations included in Ubuntu applications really ought to be quicker than they are, and I can't believe it's the OS or the software to blame.

I'm glad I don't have to try to install a new driver, but a little disappointed there isn't some option to improve performance- Unless maybe I just don't have the 3D accelleration switched on. Is it as simple as finding a control somewhere and changing it from "off" to "on" or is it complicated?

[mr_spuck]

Type "glxinfo | grep direct" into a terminal. if it says yes acceleration is enabled.

Another way is through glxgears, if it prints an fps of more than ~500 after a while it should be too.

The radeon man page lists a few options that may help with the performance and there's the driconf tool (if you have it).

[JOPS]

If you don't have 3D enabled it's probably disabled due to a security issue with the driver for your specific chipset. Unfortunately it's not as simple as turning a switch to enable it (I guess that's on purpose until the security issue is fixed) but I've enabled it successfully on a similar chip when using Xorg 7.3. You probably need to download, compile and install the DRM module for the mach64 driver.

You can try something like this as root followed by a reboot if it builds and installs successfully:

apt-get build-dep libdrm mesa
apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` git-core libxmu-dev x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev
cd /usr/src
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/mesa/drm
cd /usr/src/drm/linux-core
make DRM_MODULES="mach64"
cp /usr/src/drm/linux-core/*.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/char/drm/
depmod -ae

[Bern]

Originally Posted by erogenousjones

I realise that it's old hardware, and I'm not trying to run modern games or compiz or anything like that, but 3D is definitely slower under linux than the same hardware ever was under XP. For example, some of the 3D-effect screensavers and music visualisations included in Ubuntu applications really ought to be quicker than they are, and I can't believe it's the OS or the software to blame.

That's exactly what I thought when I installed SuSE 10.2 on my dad's old P4 with ATI Rage128 PF graphics card. And after some fiddling, I did succeed to speed it up quite a bit. It appears that Xorg's r128 driver (I have Xorg version 7.1.99.902 (7.2.0 RC 2)) runs all AGP cards on AGP1x by default, regardless of any faster AGP mode (2x, 4x) the card/chip may support.

Originally Posted by erogenousjones

I'm glad I don't have to try to install a new driver, but a little disappointed there isn't some option to improve performance- Unless maybe I just don't have the 3D accelleration switched on. Is it as simple as finding a control somewhere and changing it from "off" to "on" or is it complicated?

Indeed there are undocumented options in Xorg's r128 driver that helped me, and might help you as well. As it turned out, some of Xorg's "radeon" driver's options do work on the r128 driver as well. This is the device section from my xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
BoardName "Rage 128 PF"
BusID "1:0:0"
Driver "ati"
Identifier "Device[0]"
Option "accel"
Option "crt_display"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
Screen 0
VendorName "ATI"
## extra, works for r128 even though not mentioned in docs.
Option "AGPMode" "4"
EndSection

After X restarted with this line, glxinfo showed the effect:
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Rage 128 Pro 20051027 AGP 4x x86/MMX/SSE2


The AGPMode setting gave my Rage 128 PF a boost. 'glxgears' showed a 10% gain from to 459FPS (at default size) , and all in all the system feels more responsive. I don't know if your M1 supports faster AGP modes, but you might just try if a value of 2 or 4 helps.

Other "radeon" driver options may work on the "r128" driver as well. For example the "DMAForXv" had an effect too on my Rage 128 PF card, alas not a positive one: It broke DVD video playback, so I had to remove it again.

Note that not all Rage cards are AGP cards; there are PCI cards as well. So there is no guarantee these options will work, but it should be worth a try.

[jadebo]

Since this topic is about the ATI Rage Mobility-M1, is the rage128 driver mentioned going to work for this card also? If I would put the xorg.conf settings of "Bern" into my xorg.conf and change the AGPMode to 2, is there a change things are going to work?

I still am stuck with the direct render 'No" output of glxinfo and can't find a way to get the No into a Yes.

[erogenousjones]

"glxinfo | grep direct" into a terminal. if it says yes acceleration is enabled.

It says no =-(

This is the device section from my xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
BoardName "Rage 128 PF"
BusID "1:0:0"
Driver "ati"
Identifier "Device[0]"
Option "accel"
Option "crt_display"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
Screen 0
VendorName "ATI"
## extra, works for r128 even though not mentioned in docs.
Option "AGPMode" "4"
EndSection

Wow, that's a lot more comprehensive than mine. My xorg.conf simply says:

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility P/M AGP 2x"
Driver "ati"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"



I unsure what to try next. I'm definitely not going to add lines at random to my xorg.conf. I´m a little wary of JOPS´ command lines too, I've never had any joy with manually downloading/compiling/installing stuff and I don't want to nreak anything.

[JOPS]

Originally Posted by erogenousjones

I´m a little wary of JOPS´ command lines too, I've never had any joy with manually downloading/compiling/installing stuff and I don't want to nreak anything.

If you do the "cp" command you replace "/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/char/drm/drm.ko" but you can always rename the old one first so you can go back.


You can actually go this far without risking to break anything:

apt-get build-dep libdrm mesa
apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` git-core libxmu-dev x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev
cd /usr/src
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/mesa/drm
cd /usr/src/drm/linux-core
make DRM_MODULES="mach64"


If the building succeeds you can go further by making backups of the old files first so you can recover if something fails:

mv /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/char/drm/drm.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/char/drm/drm.ko.orig
cp -f /usr/src/drm/linux-core/*.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/char/drm/
depmod -ae
reboot


And if something fails copy the old module back to the original location:

cp -f /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/char/drm/drm.ko.orig /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/char/drm/drm.ko
depmod -ae
reboot


So now you have no excuse to not try my suggestion. And remember: "Nobody will remember a coward!"

I also assume that you don't even have the driver on your system yet so if you want 3D acceleration you don't have much choice. You have to compile it since it's probably intentionally disabled by default (or ask someone else to do it for you if they have the exact same kernel as you).


PS. IIRC the Rage Mobility-M1 is based on a Mach64 chip (driver: mach64) which is not the same as a Rage128 (driver: r128) so they don't use the same driver.

[erogenousjones]

OK Jops, I tried it, but I don't think it built succesfully. After a reboot it still says direct rendering: no. The commands after the first cp didn't seem to do much, but as you promised, nothing seems to be broken.

Thanks for your help =-)