GeForce on PPC == _no work_

GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Derrik Pates]

Well, I got to install Debian on an Apple G4 Quicksilver tower system. I
have it upgraded with a 2.4.13 kernel, but I can't get the nVidia GeForce2
MX board that the system comes with to work. I managed to locate Ani
Joshi's patches, for the XFree nv driver, and the kernel's 'rivafb'
driver. The system in question has a 1280x1024 flat-panel display
(somewhere around 20" diagonal) connected via the ADC port on the nVidia
board.

My results: the rivafb driver does not work. If I let it use its default
(built-in) settings, it doesn't work right at all. The video is "squished"
into the top of the display (the default mode is 640x480). You can see
what looks like all the pixels that should be there, but the text is, of
course, illegible. Changing the internal parameters to use a 1280x1024
mode causes no video at all - it never clears the initial OpenFirmware
messages at all, but does manage to boot normally (I could hear it
booting, was able to login and reboot cleanly).

The 'nv' driver for XFree was a similar story, but worse. Once I finally
realized I needed to specify the BusID to the driver, starting XFree86
caused pretty pink stripes to appear on the display, followed by a cold
lock (no pings, an SSH session into the box did not respond after starting
XFree86).

Is there any hope for this system? Or is this an exercise in futility
until nVidia decides to port and release their Linux binary drivers for
PPC? I'd like to get X working on this box (I know I won't get 3D with the
'nv' driver - don't care, just want 2D).

Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
dpates@dsdk12.net |     District (dsdk12.net)    |    #linuxOS on OPN


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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Ani Joshi]

Well, the problem is you are using a fp with the ADC port.  This isn't
supported as there is no documentation on how I am supposed to powerup and
run the DVI port.  On ppc, rivafb only supports the VGA port right now
unless some secret docs are leaked out of nvidia, same goes with X.


ani


On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Derrik Pates wrote:

>
> Well, I got to install Debian on an Apple G4 Quicksilver tower system. I
> have it upgraded with a 2.4.13 kernel, but I can't get the nVidia GeForce2
> MX board that the system comes with to work. I managed to locate Ani
> Joshi's patches, for the XFree nv driver, and the kernel's 'rivafb'
> driver. The system in question has a 1280x1024 flat-panel display
> (somewhere around 20" diagonal) connected via the ADC port on the nVidia
> board.
>
> My results: the rivafb driver does not work. If I let it use its default
> (built-in) settings, it doesn't work right at all. The video is "squished"
> into the top of the display (the default mode is 640x480). You can see
> what looks like all the pixels that should be there, but the text is, of
> course, illegible. Changing the internal parameters to use a 1280x1024
> mode causes no video at all - it never clears the initial OpenFirmware
> messages at all, but does manage to boot normally (I could hear it
> booting, was able to login and reboot cleanly).
>
> The 'nv' driver for XFree was a similar story, but worse. Once I finally
> realized I needed to specify the BusID to the driver, starting XFree86
> caused pretty pink stripes to appear on the display, followed by a cold
> lock (no pings, an SSH session into the box did not respond after starting
> XFree86).
>
> Is there any hope for this system? Or is this an exercise in futility
> until nVidia decides to port and release their Linux binary drivers for
> PPC? I'd like to get X working on this box (I know I won't get 3D with the
> 'nv' driver - don't care, just want 2D).
>
> Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
> dpates@dsdk12.net |     District (dsdk12.net)    |    #linuxOS on OPN
>
>
>


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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Derrik Pates]

On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Ani Joshi wrote:

> Well, the problem is you are using a fp with the ADC port.  This isn't
> supported as there is no documentation on how I am supposed to powerup and
> run the DVI port.  On ppc, rivafb only supports the VGA port right now
> unless some secret docs are leaked out of nvidia, same goes with X.

:set whiny-bitch-mode=1

Well, FIX IT!

:set whiny-bitch-mode=0

But seriously. Then the real question is, who to beat... err, talk to
about this. Obviously replacing the video card is an undesirable option at
best, since that will involve replacing the monitor _and_ video card just
to run X. Double-plus-ungood. Maybe if I get the mode settings in
riva/fbdev.c right, maybe I could get video working there? Since it was
sorta working before. I might, of course, be all wet, but I think the
values I was using were part of the problem. I tried to use 24bpp mode,
and it may just not have liked the fact that I probably didn't setup the
color bitfields right. I'll play with that some more. fbdev may be my only
option for now, if I can get rivafb to play ball.

Think talking to Mark Vojkovich (since he _does_ work for nVidia now)
might make any headway? fbdev, if I can get it working, would be a start.
However, it's (of course) going to be painfully slow too, compared to
accelerated 2D.

Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Kevin B. Hendricks]

Hi Ani,

On October 27, 2001 10:48, Ani Joshi wrote:
> Well, the problem is you are using a fp with the ADC port.  This isn't
> supported as there is no documentation on how I am supposed to powerup
> and run the DVI port.  On ppc, rivafb only supports the VGA port right
> now unless some secret docs are leaked out of nvidia, same goes with X.

Has anyone looked in the latest Darwin release?  Is there code there that
supports flat panels on both Radeon and Nvidia?  If so, where would one
look for it?

Thanks,

Kevin

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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Derrik Pates]

On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Kevin B.Hendricks wrote:

> Has anyone looked in the latest Darwin release?  Is there code there that
> supports flat panels on both Radeon and Nvidia?  If so, where would one
> look for it?

I've tried browsing the CVS tree via WebCVS, and found one reference, with
an empty directory. It may just use OF framebuffer support on Apple
systems, which would not entirely surprise me. (And of course, the onboard
OF ROM on those boards knows how to deal with ADC/DVI flat panels.)

Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
dpates@dsdk12.net |     District (dsdk12.net)    |    #linuxOS on OPN


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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>Has anyone looked in the latest Darwin release?  Is there code there that
>supports flat panels on both Radeon and Nvidia?  If so, where would one
>look for it?

The video drivers are among the things Apple didn't open source as part
of Darwin :(

This includes all drivers not entirely owned by Apple (ATI, nVidia, Adaptec,
Airport, ...) and some Apple drivers they didnt want to open source for
various (bad) reasons (PMU, ieee1394 controllers).

Ben.


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Driver Hell: was Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Kevin B. Hendricks]

Hi,

How does Darwin even boot on some machines without this support.  Do they
instead install some binary only driver set?

Also why all the secrecy about drivers in general.

Right now I seem to be in driver hell:

- firewire does not work

- radeon fp does not work

- new driver for adaptec scsi drivers does not work (old ones do)

- the new tulip ethernet driver does not really support Lite-On PNIC2
  negotiation (seems to have been hardwired to 100mb?).    Again, at
  least the old becker driver did work at 10baseT-HD.

Being an old EE who used to write his own drivers, all we really need is
the damn interface description and some sample code but I could not find
anything publicly on either the Radeon, the Lite-ON PNIC2 (very similar to
a D21143).

Where does one get the equivalent of the old "Data-Books" for these little
gems?  I can remember each little device (DMA chips, processor, memory
controller, etc each came with enough info and examples to get them
working (after playing around long enough).  Why today do they make it so
hard for people to find information on them? Or am I just looking in the
wrong place?

What is the technical or business rationale for making your "product" hard
to use?  Is there some kickback from designer to chip maker that has come
into existance that I am missing here?  Since they basically give away
binary drivers (and not selling them) keeping info locked up just makes no
business sense to me?

Anyone with insights here they would like to share?

Thanks,

Kevin


On October 28, 2001 09:54, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> >Has anyone looked in the latest Darwin release?  Is there code there
> > that supports flat panels on both Radeon and Nvidia?  If so, where
> > would one look for it?
>
> The video drivers are among the things Apple didn't open source as part
> of Darwin :(
>
> This includes all drivers not entirely owned by Apple (ATI, nVidia,
> Adaptec, Airport, ...) and some Apple drivers they didnt want to open
> source for various (bad) reasons (PMU, ieee1394 controllers).
>
> Ben.

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Re: Driver Hell: was Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>How does Darwin even boot on some machines without this support.  Do they
>instead install some binary only driver set?

Yes, they provide binary only driver for download or on their CD.

>Also why all the secrecy about drivers in general.

Go figure... some vendors beleive it will help competitors to
see their driver because it can make you learn about the HW,
some are just paranoid about open source, or don't like it for
political reasons, ...

>Right now I seem to be in driver hell:
>
>- firewire does not work

Sorta works ;) Depends on the machine and the devices, it's beeing
actively worked on.

>- radeon fp does not work

Ani have made some progress. The radeonfb in my current rsync
might work with the proper panel_yres:xxx argument. I think we
can use i2c to really probe the panel type, it's just a matter
for Ani to find the time to implement & test it.

>- new driver for adaptec scsi drivers does not work (old ones do)

It works again for me with 2.4.13 "final". I fixed a possible interrupt
probleme where a level interrupt that is kept asserted upon exist of
the handler could fail to be re-issued. Can you try this ? (It's
in my rsync tree).
It _might_ explain problems with non-openpic machines.

>- the new tulip ethernet driver does not really support Lite-On PNIC2
>  negotiation (seems to have been hardwired to 100mb?).    Again, at
>  least the old becker driver did work at 10baseT-HD.

Isn't this old becker vs new becker ? In all case, you should ask the
maintainer.

>Being an old EE who used to write his own drivers, all we really need is
>the damn interface description and some sample code but I could not find
>anything publicly on either the Radeon, the Lite-ON PNIC2 (very similar to
>a D21143).

For the radeon, I'm pretty sure if you are an XFree devel, you can get
them. You might also ask ATI.

>Where does one get the equivalent of the old "Data-Books" for these little
>gems?  I can remember each little device (DMA chips, processor, memory
>controller, etc each came with enough info and examples to get them
>working (after playing around long enough).  Why today do they make it so
>hard for people to find information on them? Or am I just looking in the
>wrong place?

#pragma political ON

That's the beauty of the market ;) The more things are kept secret and
hidden, the more companies are happy. In their ideal view of the world,
you shouldn't be able to know a bit about what you are using, that might
prevent them from selling you crap.

#pragma political OFF

>What is the technical or business rationale for making your "product" hard
>to use?  Is there some kickback from designer to chip maker that has come
>into existance that I am missing here?  Since they basically give away
>binary drivers (and not selling them) keeping info locked up just makes no
>business sense to me?

They just don't care about linux or whatever is not Windows anyway...

>Anyone with insights here they would like to share?

Well, my experience is that some vendors (like ATI), do send you docs
if asked. Sometimes with an NDA. In some cases, reverse engineering is
the only solution.

Ben.

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Re: Driver Hell: was Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Ethan Benson]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 11:13:44AM -0500, Kevin B. Hendricks wrote:
>
> What is the technical or business rationale for making your "product" hard
> to use?  Is there some kickback from designer to chip maker that has come
> into existance that I am missing here?  Since they basically give away
> binary drivers (and not selling them) keeping info locked up just makes no
> business sense to me?
>
> Anyone with insights here they would like to share?

try reading Dilbert.

--
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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Re: Driver Hell: was Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Tom Rini]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 11:13:44AM -0500, Kevin B. Hendricks wrote:

> - new driver for adaptec scsi drivers does not work (old ones do)
>
> - the new tulip ethernet driver does not really support Lite-On PNIC2
>   negotiation (seems to have been hardwired to 100mb?).    Again, at
>   least the old becker driver did work at 10baseT-HD.

These are unrelated to Darwin anyhow.  The second one is because the
tulip driver isn't being as heavily tested as it used to be and Jeff
Garzik is (was) in the process of moving.  2.4.5-final or so broke tulip
on numerous cards, x86 and ppc.  CONFIG_DE4X5 should still work tho.

You're having no luck w/ the old aic7xxx driver?

--
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://gate.crashing.org/~trini/

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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Derrik Pates]

On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

> The video drivers are among the things Apple didn't open source as part
> of Darwin :(

How nice.

> This includes all drivers not entirely owned by Apple (ATI, nVidia, Adaptec,
> Airport, ...) and some Apple drivers they didnt want to open source for
> various (bad) reasons (PMU, ieee1394 controllers).

Hm. Yay. All hail Apple and their "open-source" (with 50,000 or so
exceptions) operating system. Bah. Oh, and hooray for nVidia, too. :p

Tried talking to Mark Vojkovich, and unfortunately, he doesn't have any
info to give me either. I'm now disgusted. And of course, no binary
drivers for nVidia boards on PPC (hooray for binary drivers too), so I'm
disgusted and stuck.

I don't suppose anyone knows if there's any hope of reverse-engineering
the MacOS 9 or OS X nVidia drivers?

Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
dpates@dsdk12.net |     District (dsdk12.net)    |    #linuxOS on OPN


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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>I don't suppose anyone knows if there's any hope of reverse-engineering
>the MacOS 9 or OS X nVidia drivers?

If your problem is only to get the display to the DVI connector,
then it should be doable with register dumps from macos and/or
some tracing of the macos driver.

I don't have such a machine so I can't try hacking the driver,
but maybe Ani has ideas about what registers to look for ?

Ani, if you tell me how to get at these, I can write a macos 9
tool to dump them.

Ben.


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Patch to fix support for PNIC_II in tulip driver

[Kevin B. Hendricks]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1031 bytes --]

Hi,

Attached is the patch that fixes support for the Lite-On PNIC_II for the
tulip driver on my machine for kernels 2.4.X.

So if you are using a NIC that includes the Lite-ON PNIC_II (LC82C115)
please give this a try.  This includes some AsanteFast 10/100 cards that
run under both Mac OSX and PPC Linux.  Specifically the AsanteFast 10/100
with Part Number: 61-20590-01 uses this chip and this is the card all
testing was done for.

Special thanks to Jeff Garzik for answering some questions and providing
the PNIC_II datasheet and the datasheet of the Intel/DEC 21143 which it is
similar to.  Without those docs, I would have been lost for sure.

NOTE: This patch is just being submitted with this e-mail and therefore
has *NOT* yet been accepted by Jeff (the official tulip driver maintainer)
but it works fine for me and hopefully for others who are having troubles
with some AsanteFast 10/100 NIC cards.  But there are no guarantees.

Feedback welcome.

Hope this helps.

Kevin

- now back to fixing my Adaptec scsi driver


[-- Attachment #2: pnic2_fix.patch.gz --]
[-- Type: application/x-gzip, Size: 5088 bytes --]

Patch - some final fixes for tulip driver support of PNIC_II chip

[Kevin B. Hendricks]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 701 bytes --]

Hi Jeff,

I found and fixed some other minor problems and cleaned up the
pnic2_lnk_change code so that I could follow what is going on better.

I also dealt with the issue of starting nway before enabling the
auotnegotiate complete interrupt (but only for PNIC2 so as not to break or
impact anyone else)

Unless I find other bugs, this will be the final patch for me.  I hope you
can include it in the official tulip driver.

The patch will only impact PNIC2 chips, no other chips should be impacted.

The patch is against your tulip driver in the 2.4.10 kernel.

It should apply cleanly  in linux/drivers/net/tulip/

Thanks again for pointing me at the datasheet  manuals.

Hope this helps.

Kevin



[-- Attachment #2: pnic2_fix_rev2.patch.gz --]
[-- Type: application/x-gzip, Size: 5478 bytes --]

Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Ethan Benson]

On Sat, Oct 27, 2001 at 06:56:47PM -0600, Derrik Pates wrote:
>
> Is there any hope for this system? Or is this an exercise in futility

I suggest going to ebay and finding a Rage128 Mac edition.   I found
quite a few there when i was tasked with setting up a Silver G4 for
someone, i even got two Rage128s so i would have an extra just in case
i would be able to afford one those nice machines in the near future.

the Rage128 works very well in those machines, the mac edition is
needed since you want to be able to see OpenFirmware.

--
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Derrik Pates]

On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Ethan Benson wrote:

> I suggest going to ebay and finding a Rage128 Mac edition.   I found
> quite a few there when i was tasked with setting up a Silver G4 for
> someone, i even got two Rage128s so i would have an extra just in case
> i would be able to afford one those nice machines in the near future.
>
> the Rage128 works very well in those machines, the mac edition is
> needed since you want to be able to see OpenFirmware.

Yeah, I know that part. But will any of those cards (or any Radeon boards
for Mac) have an ADC port? The problem is, the system has a flatpanel
display - in this case, a 17" Apple Cinema Display LCD - and the nVidia
driver might work if not for that.

I have been in contact with Mark Vojkovich at nVidia, and he's going to
try to bug the right people to maybe get the info for programming nVidia
cards with DVI/ADC flatpanels, or at least make sure they know who's
interested in this info - in this case, not just Linux-on-Mac people, but
also FreeBSD people, since they also can't use nVidia's binary drivers. I
hope he has some success.

Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
dpates@dsdk12.net |     District (dsdk12.net)    |    #linuxOS on OPN


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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Kevin B. Hendricks]

Hi,

I went out and bought a Apple 17inch Flat panel and the Radeon Mac Edition
card.  I also bought a DVIator which allows my to use the USB ports,
power, and the Radeon DVI port to connect to the FlatPanel ADC connector.
It works fine under MacOS in 1280x1024.

I am now trying to help Ani by testing his driver (Ani does not have a
Flat panel to test with) and trying to get things to work.  So hopefully
Radeon FlatPanel support will be here at some point.  I bought the Radeon
and the Dviator just because I wanted to get something that would drive a
flatpanel and still hopefully work under Linux (I have no faith in nVidia
releasing anything.)

I will keep you posted of any success.

Thanks,

Kevin



On October 28, 2001 11:01, Derrik Pates wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Ethan Benson wrote:
> > I suggest going to ebay and finding a Rage128 Mac edition.   I found
> > quite a few there when i was tasked with setting up a Silver G4 for
> > someone, i even got two Rage128s so i would have an extra just in case
> > i would be able to afford one those nice machines in the near future.
> >
> > the Rage128 works very well in those machines, the mac edition is
> > needed since you want to be able to see OpenFirmware.
>
> Yeah, I know that part. But will any of those cards (or any Radeon
> boards for Mac) have an ADC port? The problem is, the system has a
> flatpanel display - in this case, a 17" Apple Cinema Display LCD - and
> the nVidia driver might work if not for that.
>
> I have been in contact with Mark Vojkovich at nVidia, and he's going to
> try to bug the right people to maybe get the info for programming nVidia
> cards with DVI/ADC flatpanels, or at least make sure they know who's
> interested in this info - in this case, not just Linux-on-Mac people,
> but also FreeBSD people, since they also can't use nVidia's binary
> drivers. I hope he has some success.
>
> Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
> dpates@dsdk12.net |     District (dsdk12.net)    |    #linuxOS on OPN
>
>

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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Gregorio Gervasio Jr.]

>>>>> On Sun, 28 Oct 2001 23:41:57 -0500, "Kevin B. Hendricks" <khendricks@ivey.uwo.ca> said:

k> I went out and bought a Apple 17inch Flat panel and the Radeon Mac Edition
k> card.  I also bought a DVIator which allows my to use the USB ports,
k> power, and the Radeon DVI port to connect to the FlatPanel ADC connector.
k> It works fine under MacOS in 1280x1024.

k> I am now trying to help Ani by testing his driver (Ani does not have a
k> Flat panel to test with) and trying to get things to work.  So hopefully
k> Radeon FlatPanel support will be here at some point.  I bought the Radeon
k> and the Dviator just because I wanted to get something that would drive a
k> flatpanel and still hopefully work under Linux (I have no faith in nVidia
k> releasing anything.)

        I also recently got a Radeon (PCI version) and its DVI port is
connected directly to a Samsung flat panel.  It just works (both the
radeon kernel driver and XFree86 driver from Ani).  Did I get lucky?
(Maybe because I have an Old World machine and use BootX so MacOS may
have set things up?)  Anyway, if I can help in some way to test/dump
things, please let me know.
--
Gregorio Gervasio, Jr.
gtgj@pacbell.net

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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Ethan Benson]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 09:01:14PM -0700, Derrik Pates wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Ethan Benson wrote:
>
> > I suggest going to ebay and finding a Rage128 Mac edition.   I found
> > quite a few there when i was tasked with setting up a Silver G4 for
> > someone, i even got two Rage128s so i would have an extra just in case
> > i would be able to afford one those nice machines in the near future.
> >
> > the Rage128 works very well in those machines, the mac edition is
> > needed since you want to be able to see OpenFirmware.
>
> Yeah, I know that part. But will any of those cards (or any Radeon boards
> for Mac) have an ADC port? The problem is, the system has a flatpanel
> display - in this case, a 17" Apple Cinema Display LCD - and the nVidia
> driver might work if not for that.

yes one of the Rage128's i bought on ebay has the ADC port.

> also FreeBSD people, since they also can't use nVidia's binary drivers. I
> hope he has some success.

don't hold your breath, you might suffocate.

--
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Ani Joshi]

On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Ethan Benson wrote:

>
> > also FreeBSD people, since they also can't use nVidia's binary drivers. I
> > hope he has some success.
>
> don't hold your breath, you might suffocate.

Hmm, its nice to see such pessimism from the community.  Perhaps instead,
you could try helping, but I suppose that's too much to ask from some.

Anyhow, companies *do* change their policies with the proper polite
lobbying.  This includes nVidia.

> --
> Ethan Benson

ani


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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Michel Dänzer]

On Mon, 2001-10-29 at 18:21, Ani Joshi wrote:
>
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Ethan Benson wrote:
>
> >
> > > also FreeBSD people, since they also can't use nVidia's binary drivers. I
> > > hope he has some success.
> >
> > don't hold your breath, you might suffocate.
>
> Hmm, its nice to see such pessimism from the community.  Perhaps instead,
> you could try helping, but I suppose that's too much to ask from some.
>
> Anyhow, companies *do* change their policies with the proper polite
> lobbying.  This includes nVidia.

I don't see the point of begging them for support though if there are
other companies who already support us.

Someone (Bastien Nocera IIRC) asked nVidia at a show if they planned to
release their drivers for PPC in the future, and they said no. Not even
maybe...


--
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
XFree86 and DRI project member   /  CS student, Free Software enthusiast

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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Ani Joshi]

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On 29 Oct 2001, Michel [ISO-8859-1] Dänzer wrote:

> I don't see the point of begging them for support though if there are
> other companies who already support us.

So all the people with GeForce's in macs should have to buy ATI cards?
That is a subpar solution, and ridiculous in my mind.

> Someone (Bastien Nocera IIRC) asked nVidia at a show if they planned to
> release their drivers for PPC in the future, and they said no. Not even
> maybe...

That means nothing.  It doesn't mean they will not help us get things
going on macs.  I have a few contacts at nVidia and they have helped  a
LOT recently with the support so far, so if they didn't care at all then
we wouldnt be as far as we are now.

Just because it isn't working today, doesn't mean it won't work tomorrow.
ATI never helped before, and after R128 they decided to really help, is
that to say we should have given up after mach64?

> --
> Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
> XFree86 and DRI project member   /  CS student, Free Software enthusiast
>

ani


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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Bastien Nocera]

Ani Joshi wrote:

>
> On 29 Oct 2001, Michel [ISO-8859-1] Dänzer wrote:
>
>
>>I don't see the point of begging them for support though if there are
>>other companies who already support us.
>>
>
> So all the people with GeForce's in macs should have to buy ATI cards?
> That is a subpar solution, and ridiculous in my mind.
>
>
>>Someone (Bastien Nocera IIRC) asked nVidia at a show if they planned to
>>release their drivers for PPC in the future, and they said no. Not even
>>maybe...
>>


What I was told by a marketing guy (no techies available at the ECTS
last year), that "NVidia either supports fully themselves [through dodgy
binary drivers] or not at all". Then again, that might be what the
company says to avoid any lengthy talks and pleas.


> That means nothing.  It doesn't mean they will not help us get things
> going on macs.  I have a few contacts at nVidia and they have helped  a
> LOT recently with the support so far, so if they didn't care at all then
> we wouldnt be as far as we are now.


Well, that's good, but I know I wouldn't want to buy a PowerMac with an
NVidia card until they change their policy or at least that you can tell
me that NVidia *as a company* is making efforts.


> Just because it isn't working today, doesn't mean it won't work tomorrow.
> ATI never helped before, and after R128 they decided to really help, is
> that to say we should have given up after mach64?


Fair enough, and all your hard work is much appreciated, just as
Michel's, Sven's, Geert's and everybody would put their nose into making
the most important output device of our Macs work better.

Cheers


--
/Bastien Nocera
http://hadess.net


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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Derrik Pates]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2001, Ani Joshi wrote:

> So all the people with GeForce's in macs should have to buy ATI cards?
> That is a subpar solution, and ridiculous in my mind.

I don't disagree, but consider the fact that we're dealing with a company
that ran the source-only driver for their boards (that they released to
XFree86 some time back) through a C preprocessor to prevent people from
figuring out how their hardware works. They're very possessive about their
intellectual property, and will go out of their way (to what IMO are
ridiculous lengths) to prevent anyone else from supporting their gear,
even if they're not interested in doing so.

> That means nothing.  It doesn't mean they will not help us get things
> going on macs.  I have a few contacts at nVidia and they have helped  a
> LOT recently with the support so far, so if they didn't care at all then
> we wouldnt be as far as we are now.

Even Mark V. isn't overly optimistic about getting the necessary info out
of nVidia to the people who need it to support DVI displays with nVidia
boards on Linux (he is trying tho, and I thank him for that).

> Just because it isn't working today, doesn't mean it won't work tomorrow.
> ATI never helped before, and after R128 they decided to really help, is
> that to say we should have given up after mach64?

All a matter of if anyone is interested in expending the effort trying to
develop support for their hardware. I don't think the Linux community
should just give up when we run into something difficult to do, but in
some ways, we should try to support those who support us. nVidia is making
some efforts, but unless they can loosen their death grip on specs for
their hardware, it's very difficult to support it, and there aren't enough
hours in a day to release binary drivers for every open-source OS on every
platform.

Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
dpates@dsdk12.net |     District (dsdk12.net)    |    #linuxOS on OPN


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Re: GeForce on PPC == _no work_

[Ethan Benson]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 09:21:42AM -0800, Ani Joshi wrote:
>
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Ethan Benson wrote:
>
> >
> > > also FreeBSD people, since they also can't use nVidia's binary drivers. I
> > > hope he has some success.
> >
> > don't hold your breath, you might suffocate.
>
> Hmm, its nice to see such pessimism from the community.  Perhaps instead,

I am not a pessimist, I always hope for the best, unfortunatly
experience has taught me to always expect the worst.

> you could try helping, but I suppose that's too much to ask from some.
>
> Anyhow, companies *do* change their policies with the proper polite
> lobbying.  This includes nVidia.

Yes, my preferred method of lobbying is to publically refuse to
use/purchase thier hardware.  Its unfortunate apple doesn't offer a
choice to buy thier machine with an alternate video card, perhaps if
you replace it with an ATI Rage128 and then call Nvidia for a refund
on the OEM card they might get the point, otoh they would probably
just say `foad' and hang up.

--
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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