Arch Linux

ablacklotus

Member

Registered: 2008-07-30

Posts: 3

Catalyst + HD4870

Hi I bought myself a Sapphire ATI HD4870 and I am trying to use it with Arch64
Other systemparts: Mainboard: ASUS P5Q, CPU: E8400, RAM 2x2048 OCZ

I folowed the instructions from http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI.
The VESA driver is the only one I got working but 1024x768 is not realy usefull for eclipse...
The Open Source driver does not support the HD4870 yet so my only option is the Catalyst...

I used the minimal xorg.conf from the wiki and tried the aticonfig tool.

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
 
Section "Files"
    RgbPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection
 
Section "Module"
    Load  "extmod"
    Load  "dbe"
    Load  "xtrap"
    Load  "record"
    Load  "dri"
    Load  "glx"
    Load  "GLcore"
    Load  "freetype"
EndSection
 
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "kbd"
EndSection
 
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse0"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option        "Protocol" "auto"
    Option        "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option        "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection
 
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Monitor0"
    VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
    ModelName    "Monitor Model"
EndSection
 
Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "fglrx"
    VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
    BoardName   "Radeon Mobility X1400"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
 
Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device     "Card0"
    Monitor    "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     24
    EndSubSection
EndSection
 
Section "DRI"
    Mode 0666
EndSection

Both only ends in the legendary "locked blank screen" and I can only press Reset.
There are some hits on Google but no example xorg.conf. And even the Radeon sample in the Arch XORG wiki is down.

Does someone have a HD4870 wokring in Arch or knows some other tricks around the black screen ?
After 50 reboots ANY help is welcome!

Janusz11

Member

Registered: 2007-05-16

Posts: 87

Re: Catalyst + HD4870

Yeah, I had the same problem first with my GA-EP45-DS4 board and now as well with my ASUS Formula Maximus (X38). I also have 4GB DDR2 and a ATi Radeon HD4870. And as soon as I used any other driver than VESA my system locked up when I started X.

This is due to the now known MTRR problem. Deactivating Memory Remapping in the BIOS might help (if such a setting is available in the BIOS). But since I want to use a 64bit OS I keep it enabled in mine.

However, some guys over at the Phoronix Forums provided a nice little script which fixes this problem. I gave it a try and it solved the problem for me. Here is the script that did the trick for me:

#!/bin/bash

echo "disable=0" >| /proc/mtrr
echo "disable=1" >| /proc/mtrr
echo "disable=2" >| /proc/mtrr
echo "disable=3" >| /proc/mtrr
echo "disable=4" >| /proc/mtrr

echo "base=0x00000000 size=0x80000000 type=write-back" >| /proc/mtrr
echo "base=0x80000000 size=0x40000000 type=write-back" >| /proc/mtrr
echo "base=0xc0000000 size=0x10000000 type=write-back" >| /proc/mtrr

echo "base=0xd0000000 size=0x10000000 type=uncachable" >| /proc/mtrr

echo "base=0x100000000 size=0x20000000 type=write-back" >| /proc/mtrr
echo "base=0x120000000 size=0x10000000 type=write-back" >| /proc/mtrr

Hope this helps you too.

ablacklotus

Member

Registered: 2008-07-30

Posts: 3

Re: Catalyst + HD4870

Hi laaapin & Janusz11
Thx for the fast answers.

After an endless search I found the Phoronix Script, too
Only one thing is still important to say. The sample script is only for 4GB Sys Memory + 512MB Graka Memory.
If you got anonther configuration the script must be changed. But I found no tutorial on how to rebuild the MTRR by hand.
But my problem is solved thank you guys

Mr Green

Forum Fellow

From: U.K.

Registered: 2003-12-21

Posts: 5,929

Website

Re: Catalyst + HD4870

Just came over this thread, got a P5Q to install and a Ati 4850 will run with 2gb until set up

Would life to run 4gb of RAM

---

Mr Green