Will FC14 drive my ATI Rage 128 Pro Ultra TF?

[Doug Hutcheson]

I want to install FC14 on a PC that is running happily under FC12. The video card is an ATI Rage 128 Pro Ultra TF and FC12 is driving it at 1024x768, which is fine as the machine (my wife's) is only basically used for web browsing and word processing.

The FC14 install DVD is not recognising the card. It does the normal boot up in text mode and I see it running Anaconda, but then I see a scrambled patch of white graphic at the top of the screen, which then goes blank. If I select to run the installer in basic video mode, I see the initial screen displayed after Anaconda, but it is scaled down within the display, as though it is something like a 640x480 window centred in a 1024x768 display. This happens with two different installation DVDs, which have both passed the disk check process.

My question is, will FC14 be able to drive the card the same way FC12 does at present? I don't want to end up with FC14 running in a small window, the way the installer runs and my budget does not allow me to buy a new video card just for the sake of going to FC14.

I gather from other posts about this card that it does not do 3D, but that is totally unimportant for my application. I realise it is a very old card, but I'm hoping FC14 still has a suitable driver.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Doug Hutcheson]

The plot thickens!

To explore further, I booted the computer using an FC14 Live CD. The initial screen and progress bar appeared OK, but I saw a bit of garbled graphic followed by a blank (black) screen and no desktop. I logged in as root on one of the virtual terminals and had a look at /var/log/Xorg.log.0. I could not spot any glaring errors, but I am not Xorg literate. As far as I can tell, the system correctly recognised my card and loaded the ATI driver and r128 module, which lists my card. Beyond that, I am all at sea with the contents of the log. I looked at the Xorg log from a successful FC12 boot and the content is laid out differently, but seems to list the same steps.

In the hope that somebody might have a look and tell me what is going on, I have attached the Xorg logs from a successful FC12 boot and the unsuccessful FC14 Live CD boot.

I am happy to create an xorg.conf under FC14 and edit it to drive the card, if that is the problem and if someone can tell me what editing would be needed.

Is it my card? Is it the ATI module? Is it the r128 module? Any assistance gratefully accepted. :)

[Doug Hutcheson]

Did some more testing:

The problem occurs also with the FC13 installer, so it appeared between FC12 and FC13
It also occurs with FC15 Live media, so is a current issue.
If I boot FC14 Live Media with Basic Video, I get a usable display, but at higher resolution than the monitor normally accepts (1280x1024) and shifted left by about a centimeter. From System/Preferences/Monitors, I selected 1024x768 and the display came back to normal. At this time, the driver was reported in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-xdriver.conf as 'vesa' (see attached).

To dig a little deeper, I booted back into (working) FC12 and executed 'Xorg :1 -configure'. The resulting xorg.conf is attached. I then booted using the FC14 Live CD, went to a virtual terminal and performed the same command. The resulting xorg.conf is also attached. The only significant difference I can see is that the FC12 xorg.conf contains VendorName and BoardName entries.

I think I have proved, therefore, that the ATI Rage driver broke between FC12 and FC13 and is still broken. I would be delighted if someone could show me I am wrong and/or tell me how to fix it!

EDIT: It appears from subsequent posts that the driver itself is OK, but the automatic hardware setup is responding differently to the EDID info from my monitor. My apologies for blaming the driver. :)

[mwesten]

My Rage128 seems to be fine with F14. I believe the problem you are seeing has to do with which mode the driver is automatically selecting based on the monitor's EDID information. In F12, it picks 1024x768@75Hz, but in F14 it goes for 1024x768@87Hz (Interlaced), and your monitor doesn't like it. So, you could try another monitor, or edit the xorg.conf.

This may be enough to do it:


Section "Monitor"
#DisplaySize 320 240 # mm
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "CPL"
ModelName "a99"
Option "DPMS"
VertRefresh 60-75
EndSection

[Doug Hutcheson]

...which mode the driver is automatically selecting based on the monitor's EDID information....
Ah! That sounds reasonable. The monitor is as elderly as the card, so might well be sending crook data in the EDID info. Based on your report that the card is driven OK by FC14, I will run the installer in basic graphics mode and then create and patch xorg.conf. I will post here when I have a result, for the sake of any lurkers.

Thank you very much for your input.

Kind regards, Doug.

[Doug Hutcheson]

I created a bootable USB drive with FC14 Live, booted the PC with it, created an xorg.conf, copied it to /etc/X11, edited it to contain the additional VertRefresh line - see attached, then killed the Xorg process to force X to restart (I don't know if there is a better way to do that).

The new X instance created a new /var/log/Xorg.0.log recording the fact that it is using /etc/X11/xorg.conf as its configuration file - see attached, but the display still does not work.

From my very uninformed reading of the log, it seems the system is still trying to use 1024x768 interlaced. Is there some entry I can make in xorg.conf to force it to NOT use interlaced? I think that is what the 'VertRefresh 60-75' entry was supposed to do, but it does not seem to be working as expected. Perhaps I need to specify a ModeLine or something?

I feel that we are soooo close to getting it working ... any more suggestions about how to tweak xorg.conf?

[JEO]

It still seems to be using the EDID data. Try adding the following line into the device section and see what happens:

Option “IgnoreEDID” “true”

[Doug Hutcheson]

Option “IgnoreEDID” “true”
OK, I will give that a try as soon as I can. Might be 24 hours before I can get back to it.

Question: If I tell it to ignore the EDID data, will it still be able to figure out the various modes available? That is, will I not have to manually add a mode line for 1024x768 resolution? Forgive me if it is a stupid question, but I am very much a novice in this field.

[JEO]

I recommend putting in both a horizontal and vertical refresh range in your xorg.conf (that the specs of the monitor can handle). That way if you disable EDID it won't put too high of a refresh on the monitor, which could possibly damage a CRT monitor.

And to answer your question, yes, the driver will automatically figure out all of the allowed modes that the card can legally use on that monitor based on those refresh settings.

Adding a modeline is normally only needed for some nonstandard mode that you would like to add.

[mwesten]

I feel that we are soooo close to getting it working ... any more suggestions about how to tweak xorg.conf?

I was hoping that specifying the VertRefresh would just override the EDID values, but I guess not.

How about...

[Doug Hutcheson]

JEO and mwesten, thank you both for your replies. I will add the suggested lines to my xorg.conf and see what happens, as soon as I get home to the machine. I will post here with my results.

---------- Post added at 04:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:51 AM ----------

Success!

Adding the line: Option “IgnoreEDID” “true” to the Device section resulted in two parse errors, which I did not write down, but were approximately:

Option entry requires one or two quoted strings following
""true"" is not a valid entry in this section


I removed that option line, then used the Sync and Refresh values provided by mwesten above: HorizSync 30-60
VertRefresh 60-75 in the Monitor section and the display came to life. :)

So, the answer to my question is Yes, FC14 drives my video card perfectly and the issue was with the auto-configuration of the monitor. I am now happy to install FC14 on that PC.

Many thanks for all the help offered and I hope this helps any lurkers as well.

Kind regards, Doug.