OK, so let's have a go at the ATI drivers again.

First, get rid of the open source ati drivers
emerge --unmerge -av radeon-ucode xf86-video-ati

Editing the /etc/make.conf file to change the last line to
VIDEO_CARDS="fglrx"
then running emerge -NDuav system changes the mesa driver so that I have
no valid selections for "VIDEO_CARDS=", so I'll unmerge mesa

emerge --unmerge -av mesa

running emerge -NDuav world identified the xorg-drivers and pm-utils
packages that have changed, and attempts to re-emerge mesa, so I'll
unmerge those two

emerge --unmerge -av xorg-drivers pm-utils

moving on to the kernel, I verify that I have the correct kernel
parameters:

Device drivers ->
 Graphics Support ->
  <*> dev/agpgart (AGP support)

None of the other modules below the agpgart appear to be appropriate, so
I'll not enable any of these.

Disable the direct rendering manager and framebuffer support, so this
should take care of the radeon driver module.  I'll do a locate search
for this before I reboot.

> Device Drivers  ->
> Generic Driver Options  ->
>   < > Userspace firmware loading support
>    [ ] Include in-kernel firmware blobs in kernel binary

Recompile the kernel and update using grub.

emerge ati-drivers

It seems this was still present from the previous attempt, so I'll
re-emerge it.

Running emerge -NDuav system still pulls in mesa, so back in it goes.
Running emerge -NDuav world pulls back in xorg-drivers and pm-utils, so
these are also reinstalled.

emerge --depclean pulls out a few packages, 
radeontool
gst-plugins-v4l
gst-plugins-v4l2
gentoo-sources-2.6.34-r6

since gentoo-sources-2.6.34-r6 is the kernel I'm presently operating
with, I'll re-emerge that and verify that it is still current via
eselect kernel list.

revdep-rebuild doesn't add anything else.

Prevent boot-up into X-windows, then reboot.

rc-update del xdm default 
reboot

run aticonfig --initial to create an xorg.conf file.

startx

total system crash - hard reset required to reboot.

Hmm - the xorg.log file has this error.
atiddxDriScreenInit failed, GPS not been initialized.

Can anyone shed light on this?

Thanks

Jeff


On Fri, 2010-10-15 at 20:11 -0400, Jeff Cranmer wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-10-14 at 10:32 +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> 
> > 
> > You mentioned that you used "fglrxinfo" in your post, which assumes 
> > you're using the closed source driver :-/  Another hint was that you're 
> > using an HD5000 series card, which is not supported correctly by the 
> > open source drivers anyway at this point.
> > 
> Yeah - I realised afterwards that I had left a few things in place from
> a failed attempt at installing the closed source drivers.  
> 
> > Anyway, if you're on open source drivers, I think that's your problem. 
> > Only the closed source driver works correctly with 3D for HD5000 cards 
> > at this moment.
> > 
> > 
> Thanks for the advice.  I'll take another crack at the closed source
> drivers, and if that doesn't work, I'll rip out the $%^& thing and
> replace it with an Nvidia card<g>
> 
> Jeff
> 
> 
>