ATI Rage Mobility under FC2 (Re: Mozilla problem after upgrading to FC2)

[Peter Yellman]

Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Peter Yellman wrote:
> 
> 
>>I've joined the list to jump in and report my experiences with ATI Rage
>>Mobility under FC2.
> 
> 
>>I found that enabling the framebuffer at boot with something like
>>vga=0x31A lets me use either the "ati" driver or "fbdev" in my
>>xorg.conf, with 16 bit color at 1400x1050 (other dimensions, as well).
> 
> 
> What exactly do you mean by "something like vga=0x31A"?
> I tried adding this to my grub.conf
> =========================================
> title Fedora Core (2.6.6)
>         root (hd0,5)
>         kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.6 ro root=/dev/hda6 vga=0x31A
>         initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.6.img
> =========================================
> but it didn't seem to have any effect.
> Why exactly would that enable the framebuffer?
> 
> 

That's exactly what I mean.  When I add that with the stock kernel 
distributed with FC2, or with a custom kernel built as per this section 
of the Framebuffer HOWTO 
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Framebuffer-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.2 (a little out 
of date for 2.6 kernel building maybe), I get the penguin logo at boot, 
a 1280x1024 console (as per section 
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Framebuffer-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.3), and various 
boot messages about vesafb being enabled.

It looks like you are using your own kernel, maybe you eliminated the 
framebuffer console options (need the penguin logo option too, for that, 
and maybe the ati agp stuff?).

I have no clue why this works, but it does -- with the stock FC2 kernel, 
and with a 2.6.6 kernel I built myself. One thing I know is different is 
that /dev/fb0 exists when booting with the vesafb, and doesn't when I 
don't. I really don't see this as a "fix", as performance is not as good 
as with the ati driver under Debian, and there can be serious screen 
artifacts after some period of use, but it's the best workaround I've 
found for my particular situation.  Someone else apparently has tried 
this and had similar experience 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-May/msg07729.html. I am 
still very curious to hear an explanation of why this does work, though.

Peter Yellman