ATI RV280/9200SE TV Out, Mac Mini PowerPC

[osxguy]

For years I have been searching for a solution to allow working Linux TV Out on my Mac Mini (PowerPC) with an RV280/Radeon 9200SE. The Mac Mini (PowerPC) has an add-on composite/S-Video adapter that works fine under OSX (you can see the OSX desktop on the TV) but which doesn't work under Linux.

Years-long searching on the WWW yielded only failed results, e.g. http://osdir.com/ml/video.gatos.deve.../msg00024.html shows an example where GATOS was tried but failed to provide Linux TV Out on the Mac Mini PPC. Another post at http://lists.debian.org/debian-power.../msg00250.html describes the sad story of one guy who tried 300 modelines without success in getting TV Out to work.

Therefore it was with disbelieving anticipation that I read the announcement at http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=806&num=1 which claims: "TV output support with the open-source X.Org driver on the Radeon 8500 to 9250 (R200) series".

Now, the Mac Mini (PowerPC) has a 9200SE, which apparently is a "special edition" of some kind, and I believe the chipset is RV280.

Will the above-mentioned driver work with the 9200SE/RV280 in the Mac Mini/PowerPC? One thing that worries me is that the driver's name is "xf86-video-ati" - does the "xf86" mean it only works on x86 architectures?

I (like many others) previously tried and failed to get TV Out working, but if this has a chance of working, I might re-install Linux/X on my Mac Mini. TV Out is really one of the last things keeping me running OSX.

Thanks for any information.

[Michael]

xf86 is for XFree86 and if you go to gitweb.freedesktop.org basically all the X.Org drivers start with xf86-video or xf86-input etc....

I haven't tried out the latest git code under PowerPC so I do not know. Nor have I read reports of anyone else trying. You could just check out the code from git and see if it works or not. What distribution are you using? Make sure you're using X server 1.3.

[robin1979]

Another post at http://lists.debian.org/debian-power.../msg00250.html describes the sad story of one guy who tried 300 modelines without success in getting TV Out to work.

You have found me again . I was the one who tried over 300 modelines in order to get it working.

After that, I received an email (see below), of somebody who apparently got it working. It still doesn't work for me though. Let me know if you get any results.

Hello,



I found that the crucial are:

HorizSync 60-60

VertRefresh 75-117



Wawrzek

--

Wawrzyniec Niewodniczański E-MAIL: niewod(at)kicia.ch.pwr.wroc.pl

vel LarryN WWW:http://ch.pwr.wroc.pl/~niewod/English/index.php

PhD student @ JID: [email protected]

Wroclaw University of Technology TEL: +48(071)320-2894

[user]

Hey!

Just wanted to let you know I'm also seeking for a solution to this problem.

I'm running Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon with todays 2.6.22.13-powerpc kernel and xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.7.195-1ubuntu1.

I've changed my /etc/yaboot.conf to include append="video=ofonly" instead of append="quiet splash"


I actually got X running but then I got some GUI error message saying some application were crashing and I figured it had to do something with either the screen resolution or that I was using 8-bit color depth.

Anyhow, I thought it was an easy fix so I overwrote my xorg.conf with the one I was using for my other screen and after that I couldn't get it working anymore.

All I remember doing was:
* Being on my LCD monitor and settings video to 640x480 and color depth to 8 bit. I *think* I did this with dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg but I'm not sure.


And btw.. to get video working at all with S-video, you need to power up the mini with the DVI->S-video adapter connected to your TV. A warm reboot from when you've used our LCD/CRT won't to the trick for some reason.


FWIW, I've got a 17" Samtron 71S LCD monitor and a Sony 29" TV.

[user]

Some more notes..
Linux (or Ubuntu, not sure which) hangs during boot if I try to boot either having "splash" or not having "video=ofonly" in in append="" in /etc/yaboot.conf

Not sure what's going on since I can't see anything on my TV.
And I'm too lazy to configure netconsole to see what the kernel is doing, heh.


Having the following in xorg.conf makes X start, but unfortunately I can't see anything on my TV. It appears as if the signal is out of range or something.
The keyword here is the MacModel option.

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200]"
Driver "ati"
BusID "PCI:0:16:0"
Option "MacModel" "mini"
EndSection

[user]

None of these gave stable pictures on the TV though.
I used the calculator on http://www.tkk.fi/Misc/Electronics/f...2rgb/calc.html and experimented.. It would be interesting if there was a way to find out what these values should be from Mac OS X since it's working there.


Section "Monitor"
Identifier "huhu"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 15-32
VertRefresh 50-60
#Modeline "640x480" 20.960 640 656 752 800 480 491 493 524 -hsync -vsync
#Option "PreferredMode" "640x480"
Modeline "800x600" 17.8 800 848 976 1088 600 618 626 638 -hsync -vsync Interlace
#Modeline "800x600" 19 800 832 960 1088 600 602 610 638 -hsync -vsync Interlace
#Modeline "800x600" 17.355 800 832 960 1088 600 602 610 638 -hsync -vsync Interlace
Option "PreferredMode" "800x600"
#ModeLine "720x576" 15.125 720 770 842 968 576 579 607 625 Composite Interlace
#Option "PreferredMode" "720x576"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200]"
Monitor "huhu"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "800x600" "720x576" "720x540" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800x600" "720x576" "720x540" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection