Trouble with Xorg on AMD Geode

[janinbali]

Hello everybody,

i am stuck in my installation of fedora on my laptop. After reading lots of threads and testing out all my options i have no idea what to do... maybe anyone can help me... Thx in advance.

Platform: Kohjinsha SA1 (UMPC with Geode LX chipset)
Screen: touchscreen with native 800x480 resolution
System: Fedora 7
Problem: Blank screen when trying to start X, the graphical installer oder system-config-display

Details:
Since the graphical installer wouldnt work, i installed in text mode. Everything went smooth until i tried to start X. The system just gives me a black screen

What i tried so far:
- i downloaded and compiled xf86-video-amd with git
- i updated all drivers with yum
- i tried lots of things in xorg.conf (different resolutions, different drivers...)

so far nothing worked and i still get the blank screen when i try startx, the setup tool, or system-config-display. I know my laptop is pretty rare, but maybe somebody tried to set up fedora on another Geode based system and can help...

Thanks for your time reading this

greetings from bali:

Jan

[stevea]

What is the graphics interface ? Type "lspci" and post the results.
What driver was selected for X11 (type "grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf") ?

[stevea]

Hmm - yeah I see the lx800 is it's own graphics.

There is an 'amd' driver from Xorg that supports this chip but it's not part of the FEdora distribution.
I'd get the source and compile it. I also see that Ubuntu supports this out of the box.

[janinbali]

Hi stevea,

thank you for your posts.

LSPCI says:
"00:01.1 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Geode LX Video"

GREP says:
### Available Driver options are:-
Driver "amd"

I tried Ubuntu before Fedora, but I didnt really like it. I will take a look at the driver over at xorg. If I get it running, i will post my solution here. Thanks again for your help and if anyone else has an idea feel free to post

[janinbali]

Hello again,

as it turns out, the driver over at xorg is the one i already downloaded and compiled. It installed just fine, but still x wont start up... Actually its quite a mess trying to set up this UMPC. Windows works just fine, but no flavor of linux seems to work. The only thing i could get to work was ubuntu 6.06 lts but only with the vesa driver, which does not let me customize my resolution to 800x480, so the screen gives me a headache when working in x...

The only solution is to run Linux in virtualbox, which works, but hey - i want the real deal

I will keep on trying, but after about a week now, trying all kinds of linux flavors, i am getting kind of tired. If anyone has another idea PLEASE let me know!

Thanks and greetings from Bali:

Jan

[sander-nl]

Hi Jan-in-Bali,

I had the same issue as you have. After a while I've solved it. Fedora 6 and 7 should work perfectly with the amd video driver package. See this thread: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=161863

Regards,
Sander

[janinbali]

Hi Sander,

Thanks for the link. Actually i got some other distros working on my machine, but even i installed the amd driver, i could not get the native resolution of the display (800x480) to work. I'll give it another shot with fedora 6 these days and i will post a follow-up on how things turned out.

Thank you for your input,

Jan

[felichas]

I had the same problem.
The amd driver does not know the modeline for the needed 800x480 resolution, and it has to be provided. I found the following googling, and it works for me:
Modeline "800x480" 31.500 800 860 940 1000 480 508 511 525 -hsync -vsync

My /etc/X11/xorg.conf includes de following lines and it works for me:

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Geode"
	Driver		"amd"
	BusID		"PCI:0:1:1"
	Option		"Panel Geometry" "800x480"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Generic Monitor"
	Modeline	"800x480" 31.500 800 860 940 1000 480 508 511 525 -hsync -vsync
	Option		"DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Device		"Geode"
	Monitor		"Generic Monitor"
	DefaultDepth	24
	SubSection	"Display"
	Modes		"800x480"
	EndSubSection
EndSection