On Thu, March 9, 2006 15:37, cdr wrote: >>>> ATI chipsets are crap in any mode. ;-) >>> Crap in what way? >> 1) You need a really recent kernel (2.6.16'ish). It'll have the fixed >> timer support, > i think i still have to boot with -noapic on Linux a 2.6.16-rc4-git10 > to avoid weird timer issues, random 'spurius interrupt - nobody cared' > crap in dmesg and timer running about twice as fast The patch that I linked to went into 2.6.16-rc5-bk12 (yesterday's), so yeah, that's probably too old. ;) Even with this, one of the boards I have (RS482) is reporting periodic APIC errors, though this doesn't seem to affect the machine's stability. >> 2) Almost no distro includes the required kernel to get the board to >> work nicely. Expect a serious PITA when installing your distro. It's > the interrupts are so screwd that knoppix freezed every 2 seconds, for > about 2 seconds, mouse and all. really was a hassle to get it setup with > such interruptions to input and processing and networking. but it did > eventually finish Knoppix's kernel is probably much too old. You might want to try one of the livecd's from ubuntu's beta release and see how things work. > now the biggest problem by far is ATIs horrible video drivers. they > barely work in 2d: distortion artifacts when the cursor nears the screen > edge etc. unfortunately you need the fglrx binary/taint/driver-from-hell > to have a working VGA port or openGL, at least for me with > 8.22.2.whatever and a mobility X300 or R200 or something The X300 is now supported by the open source 'radeon' driver: http://ftp.x.org/pub/X11R7.0/doc/html/radeon.4.html You'll need xorg 6.9 or 7.0 though, and you'll only get 2D support. Fortunately, it looks like basic 3d support is being worked on for the X?00 seriers cards. I've had some good luck with "regular" 2d support and my ATI X800XL, and the chipset built-in RS48x with this driver. > i wuld have definitely gotten an Nvidia chipset if i they had a > small-form-factor Turion platform on the market. but all in all it works > fine now, aside from video quirks (lots of apps will crash with > 'bad_pixmap' type stuff, i cant use superkaramba, or anything that uses > COMPOSITE for example, and forget about XGL/AIGLX) AMD's new dual-core turion line (supporting DDR2) is being launched soon. I'm pretty sure you'll see nvidia nforce 61x0 style laptops with it, since AMD has been seen demoing turion kits with "similar" configurations. It's always hard to tell what you'll see on the market when things finally come to light.. later, Steve
