F12b ATI Rage Mobility 128

[Robert G. (Doc) Savage]

On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 09:25 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 10:57 -0600, Robert G. (Doc) Savage wrote:
> 
> > Robert,
> > 
> > I may be seeing something similar on a 32-bit ThinkPad A22p with ATI
> > Rage Mobility 128 video. Unless I select base bideo during initial
> > installation, the right 1/3 of an 800x600 window in a 1600x1200 display
> > is torn/garbled such that the Next and Cancel buttons are effectively
> > masked. After the initial reboot I get a normal full screen with
> > firstboot and everything is fine. It would be nice if this problem could
> > be fixed, but my A22p is so old it's hardly worth the effort.
> 
> That's not the same issue; the issue Robert was seeing was related to
> the way firstboot deals with multi-head configurations (yeah, even
> though he has a single monitor - his case was a particularly odd
> one :>).
> 
> We would obviously like to fix your issue, though. If you install with
> 'basic video' the installed system will be configured to use the same
> basic driver (vesa) rather than the native one for your card, so the bug
> may actually still be present in the final install. Can you verify that
> you have a /etc/X11/xorg.conf that specifies the 'vesa' driver, and if
> so, try renaming it, restarting the system (or just X), and seeing if
> you then see display corruption? Thanks.

Adam,

xorg did indeed create an xorg.conf file:

	Section "Device"
		Identifier "Videocard0"
		Driver "vesa"
	EndSection

When I rename it to xorg.conf.save and reboot, my poor ThinkPad A22p
struggles to bring up a 1280x1024 screen that's torn/folded along
several vertical lines in its right 40%. It looks like a very wrong mode
line setting. Native resolution of the A22p 15" display is 1600x1200,
but System -> Preferences -> Hardware -> Display doesn't offer any
screen resolutions above 1280x1024.

Here's the lspci -vv output:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility M3 AGP 2x (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: IBM IBM Thinkpad A22p
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping+ SERR- FastB2B+ DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <Mabort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 66 (2000ns min), Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
	Interrupt: Pin A routed to IRQ 11
	Region 0: Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
	Region 1: I/O ports at 2000 [size=256]
	Region 2: Memory at f0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	[virtual] Expansion ROM at f0220000 [disabled] [size=128K]
	Capabilities: [50] AGP version 2.0
		Status: RQ=32 Iso- ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA+ ITACoh= GART64- HTrans- 64bit- FW- AGP3- Rate=x1,x2
		Command: RQ=32 ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA+ AGP+ GART64- 64bit- FW- Rage=x1
	Capabilities: [5c] Power Management version 2
		Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
		Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
	Kernel modules: aty128fb

As I said, this is an old laptop. The vesa driver actually works, but
now I understand that's a band-aid fix. If your X team has someone with
time and inclination to fix this, I'd be happy to work with them. If
not, no problem.

--Doc Savage
  Fairview Heights, IL