ATI with KMS flicker, without KMS no X

English Hardware
1

I’ve been having this issue for a long time now that i decided to post here. I can’t imagine that i’m the only one experiencing this.

My system: openSUSE 11.3, kernel .6.34.7-0.7-desktop x86_64, ATI mobility X1300.
Xorg from repo: X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_11.3 (upgraded to this to try to get things solved)

Problem: If i use open source radeon driver with KMS, the system mostly runs fine with some little artifacts. Text becomes red instead of black and i get fuzzy spots on screen. stripes and flickering lines.
I’ve tried to upgrade my Xorg as mentioned above, but that didn’t help.

I’ve tried the latest kernel from HEAD repo, wich seems to do better… if it starts nice. What i mean by that is: Mostly, it boots with flickering screen. Really bad, so i can’t even see a thing. This starts after grub menu and stays that way even when logged in into KDE via kdm login manager.
If it does boot nice, then i get the same result as with the ‘older’ kernel.

So i decided to try ‘nomodeset’… but that leaves me with a not starting X. It simply segfaults when trying to execute a ‘startx’ command.

Any ideas what I can do about this weird behaviour?

2

I found out today that when using ‘nomodeset’ with my ATI card required the radeonHD driver to be installed. Didn’t know that.
Anyway… i’m still left with a crappy system this way as it doesn’t deliver 3D.

So it’s 3D acceleration with flicker or none without flicker…

I’m seriously thinking about downgrading to the opensuse-era/version where prop. ATI driver can be installed 'till KMS works without glitches.

3

or give a Milestone LiveCD a spin?

4

Is there a particular reason why you don’t use the ATI proprietary driver (fglrx, also known as Catalyst)?
Here’s a script and method - among others - to install the latest version: Upgrading ATI driver with atiupgrade

5

Yes, my card is considered legacy by AMD. So I can’t deal with catalyst drivers with this type of kernel and Xorg.

If it was possible to get it to work on newer kernels and/or Xorg, i’d use it right away.

6

I’ve been doing some stuff to try to get flicker-free screen… and guess what… I’ve made it.
First tried to set the powermanagement and see if that affects flicker… answer: no

Then, and i’m afraid i’m going to need someone to confirm or test this…
Blacklisted the intel_agp module since i don’t need it and it was loaded automatically but i did a “mkinitrd” afterwards.
So, there’s a conflict between intel_agp and radeon KMS or there’s something wrong with initrd not being configured right until you issue “mkinitrd”

Can someone with radeon KMS flicker try this please? (if you don’t need intel_agp)
I really need to know wich one of the two things did it.

7

If you can give me details of how to blacklist this module your talking about I will confirm as I have the same issue with the same card.

Regards

Chris