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ATI onboard strikes back

As we plan to move from Poznań to Szczecin this week we are spending at Ania’s parents house.

To have better work equipment then my Dell D400 laptop I grabbed some unused components from home to build computer. The list was not so long:

• 120GB ATA hard disk (it was system one some time ago)
• DFI RS482 mainboard with 2.1GB ram and Athlon64 X2 cpu (my previous desktop)
• cpu cooler
• keyboard
• PS/2 mouse (which I used before buying wireless one)
• power supply
• USB->Serial adapter and some other USB gadgets
• some cables
• headphones

The only thing which was needed to make it computer was case. And this shown that Szczecin lacks good computer shops — I had to visit 4 of them just to buy decent case as most of time they only had cheap ones.

Anyway I am using this machine for few days now (connected to old 17″ CRT which I used in 2006) with on-board ATI graphics card. It has many names… “RS485, ATI Radeon x1250 Chipset” etc… And this is crap never mind which drivers are used ;(

First I started with “xf86-video-ati” one. Version shipped in Debian ’sid’ (6.8.0) is very old and reports that I have the same monitor connected to VGA and DVI outputs. Result is not funny. Driver from “experimental” is much better. But 1024×768@85Hz resolution which is default is not so nice — 1280×1024@85Hz is much better but needs to be set by XRandR call or tweaking of X11 config file.

So I tried to use official ATI driver: “fglrx”. As usual it required patching to build with last release kernel (2.6.25) but patches are already in Debian so it took less time then my last fight with NVidia driver. Effect is also strange — this time monitor started in 2048×1536@60Hz which is just insane on 17″ CRT. After switching with XRandR to sane 1280×1024@85Hz it is much more usable.

Good side is that I do not need to use this machine too often so it will stay like it is for some time. When we move it will be one of my build machines.

And if I ever will have to use it I will put NVidia card into this — they at least works perfect in X11.

Tags: amd64 ati company free drivers No Comments »

State of ATI RS482 gfx driver

Recently my machine got series of instability problems. Current situation is — machine stable if Geforce 6600GT card removed. But this leaves me with ATI RS482 on-board graphics… And this chipset just suxx!

I use free driver — ‘radeon’ one. Does it works? Sort of. Problems noticed:

• lack of EDID reading — so my 22″ lcd panel works in 1280×768 mode instead of 1680×1050
• unreadable screen after switching to VT
• X11 crash if qemu/SDL started
• X11 crash if MPlayer with ‘x11′ driver used
• X11 crash if VirtualBox started any virtual machine

Is it usable? Only if there is no other way. But I will rather work on getting my Geforce card working again then trying to get that ATI crap working properly.

TIP: to get 1680×1050 resolution working few commands needs to be run:

xrandr --newmode "1680x1050R"  119.00  1680 1728 1760 1840  1050 1053 1059 1080 +hsync -vsync
xrandr --addmode DVI-0 "1680x1050R"
xrandr --output DVI-0 --mode "1680x1050R"

Anyway according to XRandR there are no monitors connected at all:

12:36 hrw@home:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1680 x 1050, maximum 2560 x 1200
VGA-0 disconnected 1280x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
DVI-0 disconnected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
   1680x1050R     59.9*
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
  1280x768 (0x41)   80.1MHz
        h: width  1280 start 1344 end 1480 total 1680 skew    0 clock   47.7KHz
        v: height  768 start  769 end  772 total  795           clock   60.0Hz

Tags: ati free drivers No Comments »

Handhelds.org fork of kernel…

Today I wanted to check status support of TC6393XB companion chip (used in Zaurus SL-6000 for USB Host and few other things) in Linux kernel as the last working version which we (OpenEmbedded kernel hacking team) have is 2.6.17 (a bit old). Most of Google search results pointed to our patches so I tried to search also for “Toshiba Mobile I/O Controller” which also gave me pointer to handhelds.org fork of Linux kernel.

I fetched CVS HEAD (had to remind how to use it since most of projects which I use switched to Subversion or Git). After browsing their repository it looked like they have driver but marked as non functional so no use for me rather.

By curiousity I diffed handhelds.org fork against vanilla 2.6.21 (as hh.org kernel is still 2.6.21). Result was 10 megabytes file (with -X dontdiff -x CVS switches) — I wonder did they ever considered merging with upstream…

Tags: free drivers linux openembedded tosa zaurus 4 Comments »

Small does not mean powerless

Koen’s post about AVR32 Network Gateway and few posts on usenet reminded me that many people still think that small devices are crap and lack power to do anything.

Do they? I think that not. Here I use two small embedded devices:

• Linksys NSLU2 as NFS server (plans are to add TFTP, Samba, CUPS and Bluetooth AP)
• Linksys WRT54GS as router/firewall

Both do their work without any problems, both runs Linux and opensource distributions (OpenSlug and OpenWRT).

Soon will add something based on one of AT91 devboards but more to experiment with software then normal usage. And as I have 20 pin header soldered to OpenMoko debug board it can even be bricked (JTAG port was already tested with other device then Neo1973).

Great thing is that systems like AT91SAM9263EK, Gateway or STK1000 (another AVR32 devboard from Atmel) can be used to produce many different devices — I remember talk with one guy who shown his developer board (about A4 size) and final device (small rugged mobile device with barcode scanner) and told that this devboard was used to create about 10 misc models.

My friend made a project of own device based on AT91 ARM cpu with few peripherials. Total cost was less then 100 EUR and it can be used to different tasks and also give possibility to learn how to write kernel code (to handle all addons).

As Cliff Brake wrote: you cannot afford to not use Linux in your own projects. There are too many drivers and ready to use code to not make use of them. You can even get nice modules for less then 100 dollars (ARM, AVR32, x86 based) if you do not want to design own one. Then next step is OpenEmbedded and you have problem which software to choose as there is too much to choose :)

Tags: consulting free drivers jtag linux minicom nslu2 openembedded openmoko wrt54 Comments Off

17″ laptops are huge

Few days ago one of my friends asked me for help on choosing laptop. The idea was “I want to buy laptop to use instead of my 7 years old desktop”. We were discussing few options and he finally found Dell Inspiron 9400 for less then 1000 EUR. It is interesting machine:

• 17″ display with 1400×900 resolution
• Core 2 Duo cpu
• 2GB ram
• ATI X1400 gfx card
• 160GB Serial ATA disk

After checking who seller is we decided that I will go and buy that laptop (seller was from Poznań).

Yesterday I bought that beast and I have to say one thing — it is HUGE (bottom one on photo). I am used to my 12″ D400 (top one on photo) and sometimes I use Ania’s 15.4″ laptop (middle one) when I need MS Windows.

As usual it comes with MS Windows — this time it was Vista Home Premium. It was my first time with Vista — so now I can tell that I used all MS Windows versions (from 1.01 to Vista). What do I think of it? Hard to tell because I do not used it too much. Looks nice and takes some time to find things which were in XP.

Now when I used 17″ laptop I know that I do not want such one — 12-15.4″ are enough size for travelling. And for desktop I prefer desktop machine with big LCD then 17″ laptop.

Tags: dell free drivers laptop serial ata 1 Comment »

NSLU2 joined under-desk machines

Today I bought Linksys NSLU2 machine. It is small, ARM based NAS and it is running Linux out-of-box. Unpacked, connected to home network and after checking that it is working I reflashed it with OpenSlug 3.10. So now it runs 2.6.16 kernel (instead of old, hacked 2.4.something) and opensource system (built with OpenEmbedded).

What for I bought it (other then taking space under desk)? I plan to run few services on it:

• NFS server with DL_DIR contents (all sources used by OpenEmbedded builds)
• TFTP server (to server kernels, rootfs images for miscelanous devices on my desk)
• SMB server (music, movies)
• Bluetooth access point for my Neo1973 phones and other devices

Too bad that small embedded PCs are harder to get that such gadgets. I hope that one day I will be able to buy machine which will replace my WiFi AP/router and NSLU2 (NAS, BT AP) in one.

Tags: bluetooth computers free drivers openembedded openmoko wlan wrt54 7 Comments »