On Fri, 2010-10-15 at 22:24 -0400, Jeff Cranmer wrote:
> 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

Oops - forgot to eselect opengl set ati

Now it's still failing, but a different set of errors, as attached.

Any suggestions gratefully received.