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Radeon Xpress 200M


thedopefishlives
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Sorry to say but dopefish is correct. On the research I have done the x200 and x300 have very different design architectures. The main difference from my understanding is exactly how the onboard memory is addressed. If you need me to I can dig back through my archives to see what I can find for you.

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Alright, first major problem. I don't think XCode comes with the right kernel headers, so right now I have absolutely _zero_ documentation on how to write an accelerator driver. The Darwin source has a basic IOAccelerator class, but it's no help. If someone could, at the very least, give ideas as to how to derive the data I need, I'd be eternally grateful.

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Please let this work.. this video chipset is the only reason I am not running OS X on my laptop.

 

I wouldn't let that stop you... I have 10.4.8 installed (ppf1 & ppf2 iso) and I installed the callisto driver and got the native resolution working fine. It doesn't have QE enabled, but my basic interface is just as fast as my G5 is... I am not sure what QE enabled would do, but native resolution was what was buggin me... I installed the callisto 003fixed driver and followed the instructions that come with the zip to get it working...

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I wouldn't let that stop you... I have 10.4.8 installed (ppf1 & ppf2 iso) and I installed the callisto driver and got the native resolution working fine. It doesn't have QE enabled, but my basic interface is just as fast as my G5 is... I am not sure what QE enabled would do, but native resolution was what was buggin me... I installed the callisto 003fixed driver and followed the instructions that come with the zip to get it working...

 

I didn't for a while, but there were some things I wanted that I hated not having, like DVD playback, and a few games. Also, I can't run Adobe Audition in OS X.

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Long story short - this project is pretty much dead right now. The only source of information on this subject is the binary blobs that ship with OS X.

 

Hi,

 

Note a coder, but just have been following this forum with the obvious vested interests - I have an onboard Radeon Xpress 200 for my desktop. Hope someone is still reading...

 

I am not sure if this information might be useful but Livna has been making ATI (and nVidia) drivers for Linux for a very long time now. Though I am new to Mac OS, I am (more than) proficient with Linux and I know that the source code is distributed from Livna's site. (rpm.livna.org). That might be a way to circumvent the "secrecy" that ATI maintains. For a good programmer, it could mean a lot. To us end users, it could mean a lot too! :-)

 

I have used their Linux drivers for a couple of years and I get 3D acceleration (which seems to be the QE/CI that you guys keep referring to :-p) on Fedora. At times I have even compiled the drivers from source code using instructions from the website - but mostly they work out of the box. The xorg.conf file needs some tweaking for a new release sometimes...

 

I know for sure that a very big part of the ATI-Linux community uses these drivers over the propriety ATI drivers.

 

thedopefishlives : If you want to take a look, you could. :-)

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From what i've read on the forums the x200 is essentially a dedicated memory version of the x300 which uses shared system memory. And the memory addressing is the problem stopping the x200 working where as the x300 doesn't due to it using shared system memory. It's gonna sound stupid but i couldn't find evidence of anyone changing the memory from dedicated to shared system memory, something which i can do with my laptop and should in theory make the x200 basically the same as an x300? Has anyone tried this and would it have any effect at all on using conventional methods to enable QE/CI?

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I believe there are 2 versions of x220. One that is dedicated and one that is shared memory. My laptop is only shared memory. There may be some point to what u are describing but so far nobody has come up with a solution. Many devs have been trying to sort this problem out as a great majority of us have laptops with this x200 chipset inside. There just seems to be no concrete info or documentation around for anyone to work with for implementing the functions of this chipset (as it is unsupported by apple) into OSX.

 

Many people would even donate $$$ to anyone who would be sucessful but so far there is an absolute dead end facing all of us. The problem is is that everyone who has set their foot into getting this done has given up because the mountain is just to high and the lack of info.

 

IMO there is always a way for anything to be done (no matter what it is). It just is the matter of how long it will take and how much effort people can devote to whatever it is.

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here my report for x200m might help!.. check it out guy!

x200mReports.rar

 

Name ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 Series

Manufacturer ATI Technologies Inc

Device ID 0x5950

Vendor ID 0x1002

Class Code 0x060000

Revision ID 0x10

Subsystem ID 0x30ae

Subsystem vendor ID 0x103c

 

for more dl attachments... hope this help out

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Sorry guys , been busy with AppleACPI Project , that is getting sleep to work and other power management stuff. This is going to be IMPOSSIBLE , let me say it

 

Firstly its mainly because Apple's OS does not support 'Shared Memory Architecture '. For example , HyperMemory. It only works with Intel's Standard stuff. So we need to get the root of OSX aka the Quartz stuff and rewrite it back to support. Apple is certainly not giving us the source

 

Secondly , the GPU uses the CPU to do many of OpenGL Calculations. (If you have noticed that is)

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Sorry guys , been busy with AppleACPI Project , that is getting sleep to work and other power management stuff. This is going to be IMPOSSIBLE , let me say it

 

Firstly its mainly because Apple's OS does not support 'Shared Memory Architecture '. For example , HyperMemory. It only works with Intel's Standard stuff. So we need to get the root of OSX aka the Quartz stuff and rewrite it back to support. Apple is certainly not giving us the source

 

Secondly , the GPU uses the CPU to do many of OpenGL Calculations. (If you have noticed that is)

There are some chipsets that have dedicated memory beside the shared one, like the Radeon X1150 (my case) wich has 128 MB dedicated + 128 MB Shared...well we can live without the shared one, it would be even better, because many users prefer more system memory against shared VRAM.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Dome,

I hate to say it, but unfortunately not. Remember that the main problem is enabling Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Those are two very unique video rendering systems that OS X uses. Trust me if the Linux driver could have been ported it would have been done long ago. I finally gave up on my x200 laptop to go for one with a GMA950 built in. The main problem is that the memory architecture on the x200 is extremely unique and from my understanding there is no way to get OS X to address it properly.

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  • 3 weeks later...

i stumbled across this a little late... me and my gateway notebook now sob ;) But i still hae my intel chipped system running 10.4.7 better than the MB, so its all good...

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