Radeon HD 3650 in Toshiba Satellite Notebook produces black screen under Ubuntu 9.04

[kwandtum]

Hi bridgman,

thank you very much, this sounds very promising. Is there a way to tell the videocard via xorg.conf how much RAM it should use? I read something about the "vram" tag, but I do not know how to use it.

This notebook has a Intel CPU, but I do not know about the IGP.
Specs:specs

I can only find these information in german, since this model is not on their english homepage. But the specs are English anyway...

[kwandtum]

Hello everyone,

any news from the devs?

[MartinChir]

I'm having the exact same problem. Ubuntu 10.04, latest updates.

[bridgman]

MartinChir, does your system have switchable graphics ? If so is it Intel/AMD or AMD/AMD ?

When you say "same problem" do you just mean "black screen", or "black screen on the same hardware", or "obviously incorrect VRAM size message" ?

[MartinChir]

MartinChir, does your system have switchable graphics ? If so is it Intel/AMD or AMD/AMD ?

When you say "same problem" do you just mean "black screen", or "black screen on the same hardware", or "obviously incorrect VRAM size message" ?

Hey Bridgman, I have a Intel + AMD (HD3650) & it's a Toshiba A350.

I was getting a black screen & system freeze.

I tried using "aticonfig acpi=off" now I get to the Ubuntu Logo screen & the video display halts there BUT I can now press the power button & the system shuts down correctly.

Is there command to show the VRAM size or do I have to dig the ati log? I'm sure it will come back incorrect but I can check if it will be helpful

[bridgman]

I'm not aware of a command to display vram size but check aticonfig -help output.

[MartinChir]

Same, it's trying to allocate all RAM to the video card.

Removing 2gb of RAM from the system fixed the issue but it's going back in, I need to virtualize & this is clearly a Linux bug.

[bridgman]

My understanding from the devs is that problems with 4GB RAM are usually related to system BIOS problems - some of them can be worked around in the driver but others require workarounds in the OS, at least that's what I picked up from a hallway discussion. Checking for system BIOS updates is always a good first step - don't know if there are known issues on your specific hardware though...

[MartinChir]

Haha!

Well I found like 10 different threads from different forums describing in different words the same problem, mostly with the A350 Toshiba.

So I thought I would go caveman & tried Ubuntu 10.10 alpha, and guess what? The devs must have listened coz it's fixed, with hardware effects and all.

[yaevinn]

problem is solved

the problem can be solved also in all earlier linux distributions (ex. openSuse 11.2, Ubuntu 9..., Debian 5). When we boot the system, just write in command line in GRUB below option:

pci=use_crs

Regards
B.