[gentoo-alpha] Alpha gfx card support for Xorg

[gentoo-alpha] Alpha gfx card support for Xorg

[Marc Tipping]

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Hi,
I've a Permedia2 and Trio64v2 I could potentially use with X on the DS10. The Gentoo Xorg doc is very modern GPU centric, I cant see any info on legacy cards. Any thoughts on which driver(s)/config I need. Even an 8bit twm session would be enough ;).
Cheers
M.



Sent from my Galaxy


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Re: [gentoo-alpha] Alpha gfx card support for Xorg

[Jason Howe]

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Hi Marc,

The big issue with those cards is that starting with xorg 1.13, the 
driver model changed and a whole bunch of legacy cards lost anything but 
the most basic 2D drivers.   The result is that even a low spec GUI is 
kinda painful to use.

For those cards, you can always use the glint and s3virge in the 
VIDEO_CARDS section of of your /etc/portage/make.conf and see if the 
performance is acceptable to you.

On my DS20, I grabbed a VisionTek Radeon HD3450 PCI card off ebay for 
something like $30, which just builds with the radeon driver and 
associated firmware blobs in kernel config, and that's more than 
adequate for running even a 1920x1200 screen off the Alpha.

--Jason



On 10/14/21 9:16 AM, Marc Tipping wrote:
> Hi,
> I've a Permedia2 and Trio64v2 I could potentially use with X on the 
> DS10. The Gentoo Xorg doc is very modern GPU centric, I cant see any 
> info on legacy cards. Any thoughts on which driver(s)/config I need. 
> Even an 8bit twm session would be enough ;).
> Cheers
> M.
>
>
>
> Sent from my Galaxy
>

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RE: [gentoo-alpha] Alpha gfx card support for Xorg

[Marc Tipping]

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Hi Jason,

Thanks - that's a bit sad about legacy cards. :( I guess this is Linux not BSD.

I really wasn't sure which cards would work so thanks for the suggestion, I'll see what I can pick up cheap.

Cheers!
 Marc.


Sent from my Galaxy



-------- Original message --------
From: Jason Howe <jason@smbfc.net>
Date: 15/10/2021 4:22 pm (GMT+00:00)
To: gentoo-alpha@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-alpha] Alpha gfx card support for Xorg


Hi Marc,

The big issue with those cards is that starting with xorg 1.13, the driver model changed and a whole bunch of legacy cards lost anything but the most basic 2D drivers.   The result is that even a low spec GUI is kinda painful to use.

For those cards, you can always use the glint and s3virge in the VIDEO_CARDS section of of your /etc/portage/make.conf and see if the performance is acceptable to you.

On my DS20, I grabbed a VisionTek Radeon HD3450 PCI card off ebay for something like $30, which just builds with the radeon driver and associated firmware blobs in kernel config, and that's more than adequate for running even a 1920x1200 screen off the Alpha.

--Jason

On 10/14/21 9:16 AM, Marc Tipping wrote:
Hi,
I've a Permedia2 and Trio64v2 I could potentially use with X on the DS10. The Gentoo Xorg doc is very modern GPU centric, I cant see any info on legacy cards. Any thoughts on which driver(s)/config I need. Even an 8bit twm session would be enough ;).
Cheers
M.



Sent from my Galaxy


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