Getting closer - An ATI graphics guide

[captainsquash]

joe75 - Thanks for the warning, duly noted!

I think that most of us in this thread are users who haven't had any luck with just Callisto, so we're trying to make it work by other means :/, unfortunately Callisto hasn't helped me get QE/CI but we're trying to devise equally cunning ways of making it work on our hardware, maybe its just me, but I've never been able to get it to get QE/CI (yet).

 

bgg71 - Thanks for the thanks My laptop is a little over 4 years old now, so we can commiserate.

 

sack - Have you tried the latest Katana? Maybe .2c might set you in the right direction? It may be same thing you've got now, but you still could have the old ATI kexts interfering. You might want to give it a shot.

[joe75]

I had no problems with Callisto on my x800xt, but 006 did seem to work the best, just needed the correct EDID. You guy's my want to try looking into the ATi side of Titan. Good Luck.

[captainsquash]

joe75 - Thanks for the tip. I'll see what I can find.

 

Callisto b006 went down in flames for me - just a black screen at boot. My EDID is (supposedly) detected automatically because I'm on a laptop and that information is stored in the BIOS, do you think it wasn't autodetected and I should put it in manually?

[joe75]

Your EDID in bios is one of the advantages to notebooks but you should at least double check it, you would need to look through a editor because its already changed by the time you see it in Callisto. Did you try 005, I know not many people have that one. 008 was the one that would fubar my setup. With x800 I always had QE/CI as long as I used the needed ATi kexts from 10.4.5, so Callisto was only needed to change res.

[captainsquash]

I'll check it out, thanks for the tip (again )

I did try 005, all builds other than 003fixed would fubar my system, perhaps I'll see if I can play with 005 or 006 and see what I can make it do. On a separate note, I just tried Natit, it didn't work so well for me, but I can't complain... I applaud dm_webd for his efforts and I'll keep a watch on his site.

[joe75]

Good Luck, you doing a great job, and I know what a pain in the ass it can be

[captainsquash]

Well I got Callisto 006 to work on my system - no QE or CI, it gives me resolutions besides 1024x768, but they're all lower than 1024x768 , oh well, its a start. I also got OpenGL working on it, it only works on non-full screen setups.

 

I then tried Callisto 005 just for fun - Got it to work - I get all my resolutions, and similar openGL speeds but works in fullscreen mode. I'll tinker with it some more and see what I can get out of it. Thanks for the good lead joe75, we might be on to something.

 

Edit: Just tried a Callisto/ATI kext mix, didn't work too well :/ I've got my own things I'd like to try, but if anyone has any ideas I'd definitely welcome them and try them out.

[sack]

sack - Have you tried the latest Katana?

 

No, i didn't, but what I read from here, it does nothing else but what I did manually

 

1. Install Callisto 003b incl. ID-mod in Info.plist

2. Install AGPGart.kext 2.1

3. remove any ATI* except ATINDRV.kext from Extensions

 

Anything else? Once again, it was asked times an times before. How do I realize OpenGL acitvation or 2D Acceleration. All differencies i detected after installation were: no crashing when opening Screensaver or Itunes FX or Chess, btw. Chess doesn't crash, but it hangs most of the time. My ioreg -l dump looks similar to the one noted in this thread. Btw. this's how it looks like on my G5 with fully supported ATI9600 I'm sitting in front of right know (I'm posting it in order to compare it with my Dell at home )

 

| | +-o ATIRadeon9700 <class ATIRadeon9700, registered, matched, active, busy 0, retain count 8>

| | | | {

| | | | "AccelCaps" = 3

| | | | "IOGLBundleName" = "ATIRadeon9700GLDriver"

| | | | "IOSourceVersion" = "1.4.18.20"

| | | | "ATIUseTearingWideBlit" = No

| | | | "CFBundleIdentifier" = "com.apple.ATIRadeon9700"

| | | | "IOClass" = "ATIRadeon9700"

| | | | "IODVDBundleName" = "ATIRadeon9700VADriver"

| | | | "IOProbeScore" = 0

| | | | "IOMatchCategory" = "IOAccelerator"

| | | | "IOPCIMatch" = "0x4E441002 0x41441002 0x4E481002 0x41481002 0x41501002 0x4E501002 0x41521002 0x4E541002 0x4A481002 0x4A491002 0x4A4$

| | | | "ATIEnableWideBlitSupport" = Yes

| | | | "IOAccelRevision" = 2

| | | | "IOCFPlugInTypes" = {"ACCF0000-0000-0000-0000-000a2789904e"="ATIRadeon9700GA.plugin"}

| | | | "IOProviderClass" = "IOPCIDevice"

| | | | "PerformanceStatistics" = {"vramFreeBytes"=31765472,"surfaceCopyInWaitTime"=0,"bufferSwapCount"=15650,"swapCompleteDVDWaitTime"=0,"$

| | | | }

| | | |

| | | +-o ATIR3002DContext <class ATIR3002DContext, !registered, !matched, active, busy 0, retain count 5>

| | | | {

| | | | }

| | | |

| | | +-o ATIR3002DContext <class ATIR3002DContext, !registered, !matched, active, busy 0, retain count 5>

| | | | {

| | | | }

| | | |

| | | +-o ATIR300GLContext <class ATIR300GLContext, !registered, !matched, active, busy 0, retain count 5>

| | | | {

| | | | }

| | | |

| | | +-o ATIR300Surface <class ATIR300Surface, !registered, !matched, active, busy 0, retain count 5>

[captainsquash]

Sorry sack, didn't get your question right away. Yes, you have OpenGL acceleration right now and you're all set.

 

Interesting ioreg output, I'm curious as to why you're getting those in your iopci -l output if you remove all of your ATI kexts, interesting.

Edit: Ohhh never mind. My bad, thats your G5. Still, very interesting though.

 

I feel that we're going to need to work with the ATI kexts eventually to get QE going, but at this point in time they cause more problems than they solve (resolution issues, fubar screens at resolutions > 1280x1024, OpenGL issues, etc). Perhaps Natit (or maybe even a tinkered Callisto) setup will replace our need for them, but all QE setups i've seen thus far (with the exception of a few) have relied on the ATI kexts to get QE going.

[eugmoon]

captainsquash:

You may want to try using Pacifist to install the OpenGL frameworks from http://rapidshare.de/files/29425167/ATI_7500_Pack.dmg.html.

 

I'm not certain, but I think it will speed up OpenGL for you. This will NOT, however, assist in getting QE working. (At least, as far as I can tell.)

 

Hope this helps.

[jodo]

Sooo..I've just made a fresh 10.4.7 install and then applied katana2c again. this time it worked (I can use 1400x1050 now).

 

But strange is the following: VLC crashes when trying to play a video. So does Mplayer. Sometimes the system nearly freezes (sth eats up all cpu power) when opening a mov-site in safari. starting chess brings the same effect...seems that there is an opengl problem...? itunes also crashes when turning visualisation on...

 

specs:

 

Thinkpad r50 banias 1,5 i855PM

Mobility 9000 32 MB

1400x1050

10.4.7 JaS

[joe75]

captainsquash, just a suggestion, since you already have an idea of whats going on, maybe look into tinkering with Titan, omni says there is still hope there for ATi.

[wow]

So where is that opengl accelerationthat you guys keep talking about? i have everything installed and chess doesn't work, screensavers don't work. I see no acceleration whatsoever. 4c66 is recognized as AGP now with no QE/Ci and the only difference is changing resolutions, an absolutely useless feature.

With 10.4.1 it had only 1024x768 on my 1280x1024 lcd OSX was not really usable this way. So i was very happy when macvidia drivers appeared so could use finally native res on my screen. In other words native res may be useless for you, but worth a great deal for other users.

[bgg71]

With 10.4.1 it had only 1024x768 on my 1280x1024 lcd OSX was not really usable this way. So i was very happy when macvidia drivers appeared so could use finally native res on my screen. In other words native res may be useless for you, but worth a great deal for other users.

On a laptop screen which natively runs at 1400x1050 lower resolution is only needed for TV out or if you give a talk and need a projector output. Obviously I ain't gonna give a talk with a hacked OS on my laptop and TV-out is out of the question with these drivers. In other words I was talking from my point of view. Anyway, resolution alone will not help you play any video or even chess.

[captainsquash]

joe75 and eugmoon - I'll look into those, thanks. I haven't had too much time to work on it today, I had a lot of work to do today, but when I find some time I'll certainly post my findings.

[captainsquash]

eugmoon - Thanks for the OpenGL framework tip, there was a slight improvement (up (on average) .87 points on OpenGL Xbench). Perhaps I'm not having as much luck as you due to my system config, I'll include it in the next build of Katana and see if anyone else has better luck than me. It seems (so far) to be as stable as the OpenGL framework I used to have in my tests.

 

joe75 - I haven't had too much luck with Titan yet, without access to the source there isn't a whole lot of tinkering I can do. I still think it has a lot of potential and I'll keep jabbing at it.

 

Due to the changes aforementioned, I think I'll be releasing another Katana soon with the following changes..

* Will use Callisto 005 w/ tinker (instead of 003)

* Will use OpenGL framework from 10.4.1

* Will have (hopefully) a new autodetection method (instead of ioreg -l)

[Tek_No]

CaptainSquash, first of all: great you're not giving up on us "poor" Radeon 9000 and Radeon 9200 chipset users... They can say whatever they want: of course it's easy to replace your videocard with a X1600 Pro or other... when using a DESKTOP.

 

I'm using a LAPTOP (HP Pavilion ZT3010EA) with a 4c66 Radeon inside and no way of replacing that (and no way of replacing the laptop due to budget reasons)...

 

Ok, the easiest way for me to get things working using the new V3 AGPGart of Joblo is:

 

- get the CompaqX1000 dmg found in the OSX86 forum

- get AGPGart V3 (latest by Joblo)

- replace the AGPGart found inside the CompaqX1000 installer with V3

- run the CompaqX1000 installer script

- reboot

 

This is giving AGP support, resolution switching thru Callisto (included in the CompaqX1000 dmg) and 2d soft accel (slow chess, slow flurry screensaver, ...) just like Katana

 

Take care,

Tek_No

[captainsquash]

Hehe, thanks Tek_No, I'll add the next version of AGPGart to Katana v.3 (which should be ready to go sometime later today). So far I haven't had much luck with alternate autodetection methods, ioreg (thus far) seems to be the golden standard, but I'll still keep looking.

 

As for Titan and Natit - I still don't have anything concrete yet - time will tell!

[bubugugu]

I've managed to get software gl working with AGPGart 2.1 v2 + Callisto 008

just tried the latest v3 AGPGart, screen becomes dark as soon as the gui loads

card: radeon 8500

[captainsquash]

bubugugu - Couple of things to try, do you still have the ATI Radeon 8500 kexts in the Extensions folder? I know this sounds crazy, but oftentimes I find moving them out of the Extensions folder generally makes for a more stable system. I've found for one reason or another AGPGart doesn't really like the kexts quite much.

 

You might want to try another Callisto as well, 008 may be omni's latest Callisto, but I find its his most error prone as he finished it in a bit of a huff. I've had my best luck with 003, but 005 seems to work well for me with an extremely small amount of kext tinkering.

 

Edit: Also, bubugugu, what kernel version are were you using?

 

Another Edit: AGPGart v3 worked okay on my setup (Katana .2c, Radeon 9000 128mb (4c66), Kernel 8.4.1 on 10.4.6)

[captainsquash]

Alright, I have a question for you guys...

I've been kicking around ideas for the next Katana, but I can't decide if you guys would want a multi-option installer (see below)

 

 

or an installer which installs the latest packages, regardless of potential stability issues (and just use older Katana versions for older kexts, etc.), similar to what we have now.

 

If I had to put my money on one option I'd say that everyone would want the multi-option installer, but I just want to check with everyone and see if its what everyone wants. Tell me what you want!

 

 

Edit: Uhhhh, anyone? It's awfully quiet here.

[bubugugu]

bubugugu - Couple of things to try, do you still have the ATI Radeon 8500 kexts in the Extensions folder? I know this sounds crazy, but oftentimes I find moving them out of the Extensions folder generally makes for a more stable system. I've found for one reason or another AGPGart doesn't really like the kexts quite much.

 

You might want to try another Callisto as well, 008 may be omni's latest Callisto, but I find its his most error prone as he finished it in a bit of a huff. I've had my best luck with 003, but 005 seems to work well for me with an extremely small amount of kext tinkering.

 

Edit: Also, bubugugu, what kernel version are were you using?

 

Another Edit: AGPGart v3 worked okay on my setup (Katana .2c, Radeon 9000 128mb (4c66), Kernel 8.4.1 on 10.4.6)

 

I have Callisto008, AGPGart 2.1 v7, Radeon8500 kext loaded. Software GL is working and I'm allowed to change resolutions. Visualization in iTunes and screensaver is a little bit slow. (13fps and 1fps respectively)

VLC and quicktime crash on playing video.

I'm using 8.4.1kernel, 10.4.7 Jas

 

I also tried a few combinations:

 

Callisto 003 + AGPGart2.1 v2 = gui boots, but changing to resolution to 1280x1024 will cause monitor to "out of range", yes software GL, no QE

Callisto 008 + AGPGart2.1 v2 = gui boots, resolution change no problem, yes software GL, no QE

 

AGPGart2.1 v3 and v7 wont boot to gui without Callisto

 

Callisto 008 + AGPGart2.1 v3 = dark screen on gui load

Callisto 008 + AGPGart2.1 v7 = gui boots, resolution change no problem, yes software GL, no QE

 

Has anyone been able to get QE to work with 8500?

 

 

 

Radeon 8500 / 8500LE / ALL-IN-WONDER Radeon 8500:

 

Chipset Model: Radeon 8500 / 8500LE / ALL-IN-WONDER Radeon 8500

Type: Display

Bus: AGP

VRAM (Total): 64 MB

Vendor: ATI (0x1002)

Device ID: 0x514c

Revision ID: 0x0000

Displays:

Display:

Resolution: 1280 x 1024 @ 75 Hz

Depth: 32-bit Color

Core Image: Not Supported

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Not Supported

[jodo]

Edit: Uhhhh, anyone? It's awfully quiet here.

Great idea, looks already promising. Just do it

[bgg71]

Great idea, looks already promising. Just do it

Looks good! Good luck. Although probably nothing will work on my system until I try a different install disc.

[captainsquash]

Ah thanks guys - but unfortunately I can't get back to work on it right away. I was working the garden with my parents (and to make a long story short) I ended up destroying my back. It kinda hurts to do anything sitting down - so I tried coding while standing with my laptop - but that didn't work too well

 

You'll get it no later than the end of the week though, I'll promise you that

 

I reached a compromise with the installer - if a user selects easy install it will install the bleeding edge packages - if a user selects custom you can decide what components you want to install. I think it seems fair.