dec alpha, Xorg and Matrox Millenium does not work

[Don Wilburn]

Dear Alpha list,

I installed OpenBSD 4.6 (the latest stable release?) on a retired
Personal Workstation 500au at work.  The rules say I should include a
dmesg report, but the floppy apparently can't be used with this hardware
and I don't have a good way to get it to you.  So, I'll try to include
pertinent info.

This is an IDE-only PWS that orginally came with Windows NT.  OpenBSD
installed fine, but X doesn't work.  The video card is a Matrox
Millenium that came with the computer.
The OpenBSD documentation says the Millenium will work with
Option "NoInt10"  "true"
in the xorg.conf file, but that didn't work.  The Xorg.0.log does show
that option is being used.

The messages that catch my eye in Xorg.0.log are:
(partial line)...  BIOS @ 0x????????/65536
(WW) MGA(0): Could not retrieve video BIOS?
(EE) MGA(0): Unable to map BAR 0.  Invalid argument (22)

The last one is repeated again at the end of the log, so I'm guessing
it's the worst.
An internet search for that BAR 0 message brings up other people's
problems with X, but they usually seem to be related to dual monitor
setups.  I only have one.

A pcidump shows an address for an option ROM in that slot, but I don't
know if that's the video card BIOS or something else.  Maybe that
doesn't matter?

I'm no hacker or hardware guru.  This is all voodoo magic to me.  I'm
just grasping at straws, hoping to find something to make X work.  If
anyone is reading this and can offer some advice, I'd be grateful.

Thanks,  DW

[Matthieu Herrb]

Don Wilburn wrote:
> Dear Alpha list,
>
> I installed OpenBSD 4.6 (the latest stable release?) on a retired
> Personal Workstation 500au at work.  The rules say I should include a
> dmesg report, but the floppy apparently can't be used with this hardware
> and I don't have a good way to get it to you.  So, I'll try to include
> pertinent info.

X doesn't work anymore on PCI VGA cards in alpha machines. Only TGA
framebuffers are supported for now.

This is caused by the move to libpciaccess to handle all PCI bus
accesses in X. Libpciaccess does not know about the specific issues of
PCI on alpha.

Something needs to be done in the kernel to hide those details from
userland.

>
> This is an IDE-only PWS that orginally came with Windows NT.  OpenBSD
> installed fine, but X doesn't work.  The video card is a Matrox
> Millenium that came with the computer.
> The OpenBSD documentation says the Millenium will work with
> Option "NoInt10"  "true"
> in the xorg.conf file, but that didn't work.  The Xorg.0.log does show
> that option is being used.
>
> The messages that catch my eye in Xorg.0.log are:
> (partial line)...  BIOS @ 0x????????/65536
> (WW) MGA(0): Could not retrieve video BIOS?
> (EE) MGA(0): Unable to map BAR 0.  Invalid argument (22)
>
> The last one is repeated again at the end of the log, so I'm guessing
> it's the worst.
> An internet search for that BAR 0 message brings up other people's
> problems with X, but they usually seem to be related to dual monitor
> setups.  I only have one.
>
> A pcidump shows an address for an option ROM in that slot, but I don't
> know if that's the video card BIOS or something else.  Maybe that
> doesn't matter?
>
> I'm no hacker or hardware guru.  This is all voodoo magic to me.  I'm
> just grasping at straws, hoping to find something to make X work.  If
> anyone is reading this and can offer some advice, I'd be grateful.
>
> Thanks,  DW
>

--
Matthieu Herrb

[Jim Faulkner-6]

I tried many OSes, and only with Gentoo Linux was I able to get X working
on my DS10 with a Matrox Millenium card.  Works quite well, there's even a
port of Firefox.  Debian will likely work as well.


On Sun, 25 Oct 2009, Don Wilburn wrote:

> Dear Alpha list,
>
> I installed OpenBSD 4.6 (the latest stable release?) on a retired Personal
> Workstation 500au at work.  The rules say I should include a dmesg report,
> but the floppy apparently can't be used with this hardware and I don't have a
> good way to get it to you.  So, I'll try to include pertinent info.
>
> This is an IDE-only PWS that orginally came with Windows NT.  OpenBSD
> installed fine, but X doesn't work.  The video card is a Matrox Millenium
> that came with the computer.
> The OpenBSD documentation says the Millenium will work with
> Option "NoInt10"  "true"
> in the xorg.conf file, but that didn't work.  The Xorg.0.log does show that
> option is being used.
>
> The messages that catch my eye in Xorg.0.log are:
> (partial line)...  BIOS @ 0x????????/65536
> (WW) MGA(0): Could not retrieve video BIOS?
> (EE) MGA(0): Unable to map BAR 0.  Invalid argument (22)
>
> The last one is repeated again at the end of the log, so I'm guessing it's
> the worst.
> An internet search for that BAR 0 message brings up other people's problems
> with X, but they usually seem to be related to dual monitor setups.  I only
> have one.
>
> A pcidump shows an address for an option ROM in that slot, but I don't know
> if that's the video card BIOS or something else.  Maybe that doesn't matter?
>
> I'm no hacker or hardware guru.  This is all voodoo magic to me.  I'm just
> grasping at straws, hoping to find something to make X work.  If anyone is
> reading this and can offer some advice, I'd be grateful.
>
> Thanks,  DW
>

--
Jim Faulkner / james.faulkner@...
Systems Administrator, Linux Systems Design & Support (LSDS)
Yale University Information Technology Services (ITS)
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