Arch Linux
You are not logged in.
#1 2013-02-22 12:06:46
Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
I have an old-ish server (from 2006-2007 more or less) that was using solaris until some months ago but was taken out of service.
It was running X with a very basic DE.
Today, I was trying to give it a new use, but I face the problem that I cannot manage to make the video card to work
lspci reports this:
And I installed xorg, xorg-apps and xorg-drivers but it does not seem to work auto-magically.
I tried installing the closed source drivers without luck:
When KDE is supposed to start, I get a black screen: No mouse even and the inability of switching to a text based console.
The graphic card is integrated in the motherboard. I hope someone can at least point me in the right direction: It’s nice hardware to be used with arch and it would be a shame letting it to get forgotten in a corner forever accumulating dust.
Any ideas would help.
Thanks!
#2 2013-02-22 12:24:40
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
Wow, that thing is ooooooooold 
There are no xorg-apps and xorg-drivers packages in Arch, are you sure you’re not using Gentoo 
? Anyway, you want the xf86-video-mach64 driver. I don’t know if X will pick it up automatically. If it won’t, this xorg.conf will do it:
#3 2013-02-25 06:06:22
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
Thanks for your suggestion, I haven been able to test it until today.
No luck 
This is my /var/log/Xorg.0.log after reboot.
Last edited by Xi0N (2013-02-25 06:10:45)
#4 2013-02-25 14:19:48
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
You could try the ‘ lts ‘ kernel. I’ve had better luck with that one using an old PC.
In my case it’s a ‘Rage Pro’ graphics. I can get it to boot, load and run OK but it will not exit ‘X-windows’ without locking up the PC.
So I just crash it every time as it is only a play thing.
#5 2013-02-25 14:44:01
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
Hmmm. so, maybe I’d better find some other video card (nvidia perhaps) to use instead.
Thanks for the suggestions
EDIT: Looks like I’m stuck with that video card: I have no AGP port: Only old PCI slots, so I must either make the thing work or forget about DE.
A total shame being a 64 bit capable hardware only lacking a decent video card.
Last edited by Xi0N (2013-02-25 16:15:32)
#6 2013-02-25 17:31:13
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
Seriously? 64bit capable hardware, but no AGP or PCI-e? Well, you can get one of these: http://geizhals.at/zotac_geforce_gt_610 … 83230.html
Or you figure out what’s wrong. That log unfortunately doesn’t say anything. The driver loads, finds the card, then unloads. Who knows why.
#7 2013-02-25 21:26:23
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
Yeah: The computer was a xerox freeflow server (aimed to variable printing purposes) running solaris and with really few graphical capabilities that I wanted to give a second chance to. but quite disappointed that old hardware gets deprecated like that!! (I just thought it worked some other way, like keeping backwards compatibility would be so common, specially after criticizing microsoft and apple for doing so Intentionally.
As linux works on old hardware, I expected to at least make the video card working.
#8 2013-02-25 21:51:29
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
Nothing got deprecated, the old drivers are still being maintained. But since few people still have the hardware, it’s quite natural that issues will arise. There’s still a lot you can play with — check X manpages to see if you can increase the verbosity of the log, disable EXA (since there’s no XAA anymore, that means ShadowFB), go through all the options the mach64 manpage mentions that sound interesting. Also search the freedesktop bugzilla for mach64-related bugs.
Or you buy that Nvidia card I linked to, it provides VDPAU, so you could use the machine for media playback. Or you give up on the machine and retire it. Lots of options.
#9 2013-02-26 06:47:39
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
Ok, I removed the vesa driver and updated the system, now I get this:
I don’t know if feeling more confused or relieved that the error log looks to be more specific now. xD
EDIT:
I installed hwd from AUR and ran hwd -X
Two config files were created: xorg.conf.ati and xorg.conf.vesa
The .ati one didn’t work, but the .vesa one did.
Now I can at least run KDE and knowing the card has 8Mb of memory, I think I cannot get anything better. No animations, but they are not necessary at all.
Changing vesa for mach64 on the driver section didn’t work either. the module loads, then unloads, like before.
Solved perhaps or do you have any more ideas?
Last edited by Xi0N (2013-02-26 08:13:54)
#10 2013-02-26 11:24:33
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
I wouldn’t call using the vesa driver «solved». Vesa is a fallback.
That log looks much better. We have a crash. Which reminded me of the SiS driver having issues with EXA hooks, the solution was to deactivate some of the hooks. In the bug discussing SiS, there’s a link to a patch for mach64: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51137
Edit: Hmm, the latest xf86-video-mach64 release should already have that patch included. Well, the crash could still be EXA related. For SiS, I switched to ShadowFB as a workaround before the driver was patched.
A crash should be reported. The mach64 driver has a maintainer now, so there are chances the crasher could be fixed. But you’ll need to recompile a bunch of stuff with debug symbols, so that you’ll get a more usable backtrace.
Last edited by Gusar (2013-02-26 11:40:08)
#11 2013-02-27 21:27:29
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
I’ve finally got my old savage card working. Had to use ‘ Option «DisableTile» in xorg.
Last edited by NoSavvy (2013-02-28 09:20:43)
#12 2013-02-28 12:12:12
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
What kind of usb ports does that thing have? If at least 2.0, maybe you could use an external video card. They are quite weird though and probably tough to set up.
#13 2013-02-28 12:26:11
Re: Help making an old ATI Rage XL work
Well, good idea, but I think it would b better to get a simple PCI one. (I didn’t know they were around still) and set it up
Thanks though!!
Linux Mint Forums
Welcome to the Linux Mint forums!
Need help with Rage XL
Need help with Rage XL
Post by dave843 » Wed Aug 13, 2014 10:13 pm
The problem is that it says it is running in software rendering mode, and it looks horrible. I can’t read anything in command prompts, and the backgound only covers 2/3 of the screen.
Is there a proprietary driver I should use or something? So far, this is a very basic LM installation.
Re: Need help with Rage XL
Post by ofb » Wed Aug 13, 2014 11:51 pm
Re: Need help with Rage XL
Post by nomko » Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:07 am
reading that thread i also can conclude that the ATI/AMD Rage series is no longer supported. Even on the ATI/AMD they offer Windows driver(s) for the Discontinued ATI Rage Series Products. you would expect that the Linux kernel still supports these old video cards, but it is not. At some point, even the developers of the kernel must drop support for old devices. The ATI/AMD Rage XL was a low-cost RAGE Pro-based solution. As a low-power solution with capable 2D-acceleration, the chip was used on many low-end graphics cards. The chip was basically a die-shrunk Rage Pro, optimized to be very inexpensive for solutions where only basic graphics output was necessary. That means it has very limited 3D capacities (else no 3D capacity) and not really suitable for a desktop envornment with 3D effects since it has only basic graphics 2D output.
Токарчук Андрей
Мне 30 лет. Профессионально занимаюсь PHP-программированием. В работе использую 1C-Битрикс, Symfony, Doctrine и многое другое. А вообще мне нравится всё новое и интересное 🙂
ATI Rage XL (rev 27) on Ubuntu 11.10
В этом посте я расскажу об одной баге, связанной с установкой Ubuntu 11.10 на сервер. Решил проблемку с работой графики на ATI Rage XL, консольным режимом и настройкой сети.
Проблема
Итак, есть у меня сервер на базе Gygabyte GA-8IKXR и стоит в нём замечательно видео от ATI, а именно ATI Rage XL (rev 27). Раньше там стояла старая версия Ubuntu Server и решил я её обновить. Сервер у меня стоял а дата-центре и за несколько лет у него села батарейка на материнской плате. После замены батарейки, форматирования финтов я приступил к установке ОС. В качестве таковой я выбрал Ubuntu Server 11.10. После установки меня ожидал неприятный сюрприз — черный экран с надписью «Out of range». Это печально, залесть в однопользовательский режим у меня не получилось, даже заставка выбора ядра не показывалась. Пришлось шаманить и искать рабочий вариант.
Я попробоал desktop-версию Ubuntu 11.10 и она установилась нормально. Отключил GUI dвот по этому руководству, перезагрузился в консольный режим и ситуация повторилась — Out of rage. Хорошо, что к тому моменту я уже настроил ssh И смог подконнектиться к страдальцу. Погуглив по сети я всё-таки нашел решение.
Решение
В файле /etc/initramfs-tools/modules добавляем строку