Mesa's Classic Drivers Have Been Retired - Affecting ATI R100/R200 & More

[kenren]

i915g that gen2 and gen3.

gen2 seems to be NOT supported by i915g.

https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel_i915g_default

"The oldest i8xx hardware would still be using the classic Mesa driver"

Also see:

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/commit/?id=1bf0d869ae07ffc5b9cd79904b421cd37997ae8c

all indicate that i915g support only gen3 (as you told me with the help of llvm), but NOT gen2.

[oiaohm]

gen2 seems to be NOT supported by i915g.
"The oldest i8xx hardware would still be using the classic Mesa driver"

all indicate that i915g support only gen3 (as you told me with the help of llvm), but NOT gen2.

Do note the not all gen3 does support opengl 2.0 shaders in hardware. To be correct its 1.3 opengl hardware anything past that it solftware filling in the gaps with intel gen3.

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/me...ff994b45fcbeef Looks like they are going the route of cutting the gen2 into its own driver. So there is going to be a i830 driver again.

https://feedback.wildfiregames.com/r...e/Intel%20845G The gen2 hardware is pre opengl 1.3-4 hardware
https://feedback.wildfiregames.com/r...e/Intel%20915G The gen3 hardware is post opengl 1.4 hardware The early gen3 hardware is not opengl 2.0 hardware.

Do note that the 865G the last of the gen2 is in fact opengl 1.4 hardware but its buggy opengl 1.4 hardware.

In shader hardware supported functionality there is no difference between gen2 and early gen3 intel hardware. The no difference is more insane those who examine silicon from the start of gen2 to I think the second in gen3 the base silicon design of the opengl vertex shader does not change at all. The opengl 2.0 shaders is not the reason why i915g driver does not support gen2 because those have to be software emulated and there is no change in this area between gen2 and gen3. The shader in hardware changes latter in gen3.

Yes gen2 expands in features over its releases this is why the last gen2 is basically the prototype to the first gen3 and the last gen3 is basically the prototype to the next gen4.

You could say the intel gen lines are very much attempts to put lines a progressively changing shades of grey. Like if the Intel 865G design had been perfect out the box we would most likely draw the gen3 line at Intel 865G not the Intel 915G.

When i915g was first proposed it was going to cover gen2.

So we both had something wrong kenren. The reason why i915g does not support gen2 has nothing todo with opengl shaders because there is no difference at the change from gen2 to gen3. It is more having to code around gen2 intel hardware quirks/defects that the latter gen3 don't have. I was presuming due to how small the difference really is between gen2 and gen3 hardware that the original proposal of i915g would have been follow though and so far it has not been.

The horrible part here is there use to be a i830 driver before it was merged into i915 driver that becomes i915c because it was classed as waste of resources maintaining it. Now 2 decades later they are basically reversing the process splitting i830 driver out of i915c instead of expanding i915g to what the original plan of i915g said was the goal.. And of course split gen2 and gen3 at driver level still does not make much sense due to how close in design they really are.

[GKraats]

I was using i915 Gen 3 driver on 945GM chipset at Debian Testing Bookworm.
This driver suddenly was removed by a Debian upgrade. Only software rendering was available.

Although there is a lot of talking here about alternatives like gallium i915g or the classic amber driver,
these drivers still are not available and cannot be tested.

A lot of work has been done at gallium i915, but the final touch still is not done and a release still is not announced.
The software for this i915-driver is available at Debian, but must be compiled manually.

Performance is not the problem.
Big problem is bad support for larger shaders.
The classic i915 accepts every large shader and uses (slow) software rendering if hardware is too poor.
Gallium i915 refuses complicated shaders or replaces large shaders with a standard shader????

[endlesseden]

(Sorry for the several year old necro reply, but it deserved a follow up and i /just/ got to the notification email -_-)

There are some emulation options that are becoming very useful.

Ofcourse emulation has always been a option, there has been plenty of hardware emulation options over the last decade for a lot of these machines. Im aware of the alternatives, and the nostalgia is not for the games alone. Its for the experience, quirks and limitations.
Emulation looses a lot of that, alongside the excitement of maintaining such hardware, and sharing such experiences with those that never got to.

I dont pull out my 386dx system, or a system with a Voodoo2 as its the only option. i do it, because i want the experience. Emulation just cannot do that, its their goal to erase that, and simplify everything for the modern machine.

---

I strongly believe in the maintenance of historical hardware, with modern software. There is little reason not to, other than a lack of a desire to keep things modular and make everything monolithic again, with even less hardware support... -- Mesa dropped all of this, without considering at all, where this is going. Deprecating hardware drivers simply because they lack features of client software you will never use on them in the first place is pretty stupid. Refactor, and integrate. Their older codebases should be easier now, not harder...

[Quackdoc]

(Sorry for the several year old necro reply, but it deserved a follow up and i /just/ got to the notification email -_-)


Ofcourse emulation has always been a option, there has been plenty of hardware emulation options over the last decade for a lot of these machines. Im aware of the alternatives, and the nostalgia is not for the games alone. Its for the experience, quirks and limitations.
Emulation looses a lot of that, alongside the excitement of maintaining such hardware, and sharing such experiences with those that never got to.

I dont pull out my 386dx system, or a system with a Voodoo2 as its the only option. i do it, because i want the experience. Emulation just cannot do that, its their goal to erase that, and simplify everything for the modern machine.

---

I strongly believe in the maintenance of historical hardware, with modern software. There is little reason not to, other than a lack of a desire to keep things modular and make everything monolithic again, with even less hardware support... -- Mesa dropped all of this, without considering at all, where this is going. Deprecating hardware drivers simply because they lack features of client software you will never use on them in the first place is pretty stupid. Refactor, and integrate. Their older codebases should be easier now, not harder...

I disagree with the sentiment that emulation erases the experience. For me the experience is the stuff I interact with. CRT monitor, old IBM PS/2 keyboard and mouse. Emulation just makes it convenient for me. Qemu-3dfx displayed fullscreen keyboard and mouse bound to the VM makes a very authentic experience, well a little faster in some aspects granted but that can be dealt with in a myriad of ways. I've done commadore emulation similarly and it's still good, albiet a bit strange since my svga crt is significantly better then what I had with a commadore.