X doesn't work!

[Snow_Shelter]

Hi all,


I recently installed Fedora Core 5 Test 3 on my PowerBook G4 15". The PowerBook was released in the late months of 2005. My Mac OS X shows it as PowerBook 5,8. It's equipped with an ATi Radeon 9700 Dual DVI GPU with 128MB Video RAM. I have a slight problem though, my X11 doesn't work. When ever I try to start X, it crashes my tty, and I get a kernel panic. Nothing gets logged to /var/log/Xorg.0.log, and thus I don't have a suitable error message. I've run system-config-display --reconfigure about a million times, and it's only worked once. After it wrote the new configuration file, I tried to start X again, and I got another kernel panic. When the computer boots, before it goes into init, I see something that may be part of the problem. It says "Video RAM 16MB at 0x0". Here is the output from gdb when I try to run X.

(gdb) X
0x0: Cannot access memory at address 0x0
(gdb) X
0x4: Cannot access memory at address 0x4
(gdb) X
0x8: Cannot access memory at address 0x8
(gdb) X
0xc: Cannot access memory at address 0xc
(gdb) X
0x10: Cannot access memory at address 0x10
(gdb) X
0x14: Cannot access memory at address 0x14
(gdb) X
0x18: Cannot access memory at address 0x18
(gdb) X
0x1c: Cannot access memory at address 0x1c
(gdb) X
0x20: Cannot access memory at address 0x20
(gdb) X
0x24: Cannot access memory at address 0x24


This cycle will repeat until you get tired of dealing with it.


I was hoping someone has, or can come up with, a solution to this. I was really looking forward to running Linux on my PowerBook. I have Fedora Core 4 Test 1 CDs, but they don't boot. I also have Mandriva LE2005 PPC CDs, which wont boot. So you can see why those aren't options. Thanks.

--Snow_Shelter
(Beware the Snow)

[zion42]

Hi all,


I recently installed Fedora Core 5 Test 3 on my PowerBook G4 15". The PowerBook was released in the late months of 2005. My Mac OS X shows it as PowerBook 5,8. It's equipped with an ATi Radeon 9700 Dual DVI GPU with 128MB Video RAM. I have a slight problem though, my X11 doesn't work. When ever I try to start X, it crashes my tty, and I get a kernel panic. Nothing gets logged to /var/log/Xorg.0.log, and thus I don't have a suitable error message. I've run system-config-display --reconfigure about a million times, and it's only worked once. After it wrote the new configuration file, I tried to start X again, and I got another kernel panic. When the computer boots, before it goes into init, I see something that may be part of the problem. It says "Video RAM 16MB at 0x0". Here is the output from gdb when I try to run X.

(gdb) X
0x0: Cannot access memory at address 0x0
(gdb) X
0x4: Cannot access memory at address 0x4
(gdb) X
0x8: Cannot access memory at address 0x8
(gdb) X
0xc: Cannot access memory at address 0xc
(gdb) X
0x10: Cannot access memory at address 0x10
(gdb) X
0x14: Cannot access memory at address 0x14
(gdb) X
0x18: Cannot access memory at address 0x18
(gdb) X
0x1c: Cannot access memory at address 0x1c
(gdb) X
0x20: Cannot access memory at address 0x20
(gdb) X
0x24: Cannot access memory at address 0x24


This cycle will repeat until you get tired of dealing with it.


I was hoping someone has, or can come up with, a solution to this. I was really looking forward to running Linux on my PowerBook. I have Fedora Core 4 Test 1 CDs, but they don't boot. I also have Mandriva LE2005 PPC CDs, which wont boot. So you can see why those aren't options. Thanks.

--Snow_Shelter
(Beware the Snow)

Sounds to me like theres a problem with your VRAM.
Your Powerbook should have came with an Apple Hardware Test CD.
Boot from it and run the extended test. It will test your VRAM.
If the test fails you will need a new logic board, if it passes there may be other issues.

good luck!

Rick