Fedora Core 6 & ATi Radeon x1600 AGP finally working

Alhamdulillaah, through some diligent searching and more than a few unnecessary steps, I was able to get my not-bottom-of-the-line ATi Radeon x1600 AGP video card working reasonably well on Fedora Core 6. Sadly, this series of discoveries happened after I had decided to resort to a complete wipe/reinstallation. However, the decision to hose the old system was also influenced by the fact that I wanted to try out a new filesystem – ReiserFS in this case.

The key breakthrough was a discovered on the Livna wiki that seemingly should have more prominence than to be accidentally discovered by searching “fglrx” on their site. Nonetheless, by adding the lines

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

to my xorg.conf file and restarting X, I was able to overcome a problem caused, at least indirectly, by the driver’s assumption about AIGLX – which is something else that I might be interested to look into later. Now I had 2D acceleration. But I was still not getting what I wanted from fglrxinfo (i.e., no error messages), and it was complaining about DRI and whatnot, so a search for the error message I was getting directed me to the wonderful folks that are working on DRI and their troubleshooting page. By adding the following lines

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

and restarting X, I was finally in the bountiful land of accelerated 2D AND 3D! Alhamdulillaah!
(2006-12-09 Edit): I discovered, after trying my own fix on a second installation of FC6, that WordPress so kindly converted my double-quotes to “curly” quotes, which the aticonfig utility so kindly informed me was invalid for an xorg.conf config file. I’ve (hopefully) corrected it above.

13 Comments to “Fedora Core 6 & ATi Radeon x1600 AGP finally working”

  1. Adam Boschma says:

    I’m using Fedora Core 6 as well and an ATI Radeon x1600 agp… Though the problem I am having is I am getting absolutely no video after booting into FC6. Any thoughts?

    (sorry for posting on the wrong section first, not used to this site ;))

  2. Abu Hurayrah says:

    Well, for starters, you might want to take a look at your xorg.conf file (located under /etc/X11/xorg.conf). I’ll post mine at the end here. When you say, “absolutely no video”, what do you mean? Do you get a command prompt, a completely blank screen, does your monitor report no signal, etc. Also, have you verified that your video card is, indeed, in working condition? And is this a fresh installation of FC6, and upgrade, did it work before, and now it doesn’t, did you just install drivers – the more information, the better.

    Here’s my xorg.conf:
    ==========================================

    # Xorg configuration created by pyxf86config

    Section “ServerLayout”
    Identifier “Default Layout”
    Screen 0 “aticonfig-Screen[0]” 0 0
    InputDevice “Keyboard0” “CoreKeyboard”
    EndSection

    Section “Files”
    EndSection

    Section “Module”
    Load “glx”
    Load “dri”
    EndSection

    Section “Extensions”
    Option “Composite” “Disable”
    EndSection

    Section “InputDevice”
    Identifier “Keyboard0”
    Driver “kbd”
    Option “XkbModel” “pc105”
    Option “XkbLayout” “us”
    EndSection

    Section “Monitor”
    Identifier “aticonfig-Monitor[0]”
    Option “VendorName” “ATI Proprietary Driver”
    Option “ModelName” “Generic Autodetecting Monitor”
    Option “DPMS” “true”
    EndSection

    Section “Device”
    Identifier “aticonfig-Device[0]”
    Driver “fglrx”
    Option “VideoOverlay” “on”
    EndSection

    Section “Screen”
    Identifier “aticonfig-Screen[0]”
    Device “aticonfig-Device[0]”
    Monitor “aticonfig-Monitor[0]”
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection “Display”
    Viewport 0 0
    Depth 24
    EndSubSection
    EndSection

    Section “DRI”
    Mode 0666
    EndSection
    ==========================================

  3. Adam Boschma says:

    No video as soon as it runs through boot, the card works. It’s what I’m using atm in my XP boot. I have the PC set up for dual boot. Monitor just takes a nap as soon as it’s done running boot to FC6. I’m checking if FC6 just didnt like the fact I had it plugged in through DVI rather than the VGA on the card right now…

  4. Adam Boschma says:

    VGA gave basically no difference. I’m able to select which OS to boot, run through the boot to Linux and as soon as its done booting monitor detects no signal from card…

  5. Abu Hurayrah says:

    I currently run through my VGA connector, so at first I thought that might be the case, but you’ve demonstrated that it is not.

    One issue I was experiencing with my video card was a lack of sufficient power. I was experiencing lockups in Windows after an extended period of time, and I would experience lockups in Fedora (both FC5 & FC6) after a very short time. If you think this is a possibility, then I would recommend you reconfigure your power connections to ensure your video card has at least one dedicated connector (i.e., not shared with any other peripherals) and/or disconnecting some non-essential devices for testing purposes (e.g., CD/DVD-ROM drives, extra disks, etc.). This was an elusive problem for me that resulted in a lot of headaches….

  6. Adam Boschma says:

    Still not working, though I did try a different Linux OS and got that working fairly well… Thanks for your help!

  7. Abu Hurayrah says:

    I’m glad you were able to get it working, though I’m dismayed that you had to opt for another OS rather than Fedora. Hopefully the hardware support situation of Linux and manufacturers’ poor driver support (and even poorer cooperation with kernel developers!) is rectified soon.

  8. Vitaly says:

    Which Linux Distro were you able to use

  9. Jeremy says:

    I just ran into the exact same problem with X1600 video card. Installing Gentoo now.

  10. Abu Hurayrah says:

    Yeah, I probably should try Gentoo myself again. I was usin’ it earlier, but I didn’t exert too much of an effort. Now that I have a spare PC, I guess it’s not a bad idea to give Gentoo another shot…

  11. TheCheerer says:

    Gentoo’s long compile times are a feature! That’s when you grab some sleep.

  12. Abu Hurayrah says:

    I’m actually hung up on getting the display drivers to work with X. Yeah, kinda the same problem I had before, and I just haven’t had time to debug it sufficiently. When I get a chance, I’ll try to resolve it, in shaa Allaah, and continue reporting at that point.

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