[MPlayer-users] tvout on older ATI rage pro LT Mach64 working on fedora (semi long)

[Bret Hughes]

Cross posting to several lists, sorry if you are on more than one.

I have been working off and on on this for a while and finally got it to
work:

Situation:  Old (>3 years) ati rage pro (xpert LCD) card with dvi and
video outputs.  Wanted tvout and hard ware acceleration and scaling for
mplayer

X sees the card (From /var/log/XFree86.0.log) as 
 
(--) PCI:*(0:9:0) ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage LT Pro rev 220, Mem @
0xdf000000/24, 0xdefff000/12, I/O @ 0xd800/8, BIOS @ 0xdefc0000/17

and later 

(--) ATI(0): ATI 3D Rage LT Pro graphics controller detected.
(--) ATI(0): Chip type 4C49 "LI", version 4, foundry UMC, class 0,
revision 0x03.



This machine started out as a significantly modified RH7.1 with Xfree
4.1 box.

This is a mach64 card and I got the hardware acceleration working via
simply overlaying the gatos.com ati.2 binaries over the original XFree
4.1 RH binaries.  I could not for the life of me find a non patch and
compile solution for getting the tv out to provide anything other than a
scrambled signal and I really wanted to alter the redhat rpms as little
as possible.

I found several web sites and mails about people getting this to work
under X 4.2 and 4.3 so I decided WTF, lets see if it works with fedora.

upgraded the 7.1 box to fedora and dinked with several of our programs
until I got stuff pretty much working and then decided to try the
retinal burn binaries with dri and tvout experimental code patched onto
the gatos ati.2 code.

The primary tvout page is:
http://www.retinalburn.net/linux/tvout.html

first backed up /usr/X11R6

cp -var /usr/X11R6 /usr/X11R6.before.gatos

DLed the bgz from 

http://www.retinalburn.net/linux/dri-xv/mach64-dri-xv-20030413.i386.tar.bz2

bunzip2 mach64-dri-xv-20030413.i386.tar.bz2
tar -xf mach64-dri-xv-20030413.i386.tar
cd dripkg
./install.sh

the install script asks a few questions, found the correct kernel and
compiled a drm module and installed the X code into /usr/X11R6 tree.

I plugged in the video input on my vcr and rebooted the box to make sure
that the card initialized the video out.

Added option "TVOut" to the device section for the ati card in
/etc/X11/XFConfig, set the default color depth to 16 and made sure that
800x600 was the first reslution found in the 16 bit subsection:

startx and bingo x on the tv and vga port.

back to XF86Config and added 1024x768 to the 16 bit subsection:

startx and bingo 1024x768 tvout!  vga is rolling at this resolution but
this is good for now.

with mplayer installed from atrpms
I can view a 320x240 mpeg scaled to fullscreen with 98% system idle and
glxgears, which I have never actually seen run before, looks like:

don't know about the dri stuff yet it was not the primary goal.

[exhibitor1 at test1 tmp]$ glxgears
Xlib:  extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
628 frames in 5.0 seconds = 125.600 FPS
612 frames in 5.0 seconds = 122.400 FPS
612 frames in 5.0 seconds = 122.400 FPS
689 frames in 5.0 seconds = 137.800 FPS

not real speedy I don't think but this is on a duron 800 and a pretty
old card so I am happy so far.

I hope this helps some future surfer and if anyone has any additional
tips I would be glad to hear them


Bret

here is the relevant section of XF86Config


Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "ati"
        VendorName  "Videocard vendor"
        BoardName   "ATI Mach64"
        Option      "TVOut"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     16
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth     16
                Modes   "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth     24
                Modes    "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
        Group        0
        Mode         0666
EndSection