No Video Mac 8600 was Re: Old World Mac

[Tommy Trussell]

> On 21/08/2005, at 12:38 PM, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> 
> > On 8/20/05, Peter Gort <pgort at iprimus.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >> I have been given a Powermac
> >> 8600/250 with 224MBs of ram.  ...  Worked perfectly first time
> >> except.....
> >>
> >> No X11 .  Text mode is working perfectly but no X11.
> >>
> >
> > You will want to identify your video hardware for future reference.
> > You can use the "lspci" command to look at the PCI devices -- one of
> > them may say "display controller" and list the chip it uses.
...
> > Also do a Google search on your monitor's model number and find its
> > EXACT video characteristics. You want to know Vertical frequency and
> > Horizontal frequency, for instance. Both may have an acceptable range.
> >
> > Then issue this command
> >
> > sudo dpkg reconfigure xserver-xorg


On 8/21/05, Peter Gort <pgort at iprimus.com.au> wrote:
> I've done as Tommy suggested [above] and lspci describes my video as
> 
> non-VGA Unclassified device: Apple Computer Inc. Control Video
> 
> Not a lot of useful info there.....  Mac specs turned it up as 2MB
> video ram, but there doesn't seem to be a graphic chip listed.  Video
> is on the logic board, not in a PCI card.  Googling turned up a
> couple of articles that basically suggested checking the refresh rates.
> 
> I ran sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, and when it asked me to
> choose a driver obviously there wasn't one there that looked correct,
> so I chose the vga driver.  best resolution I choose as
> 1024*768*16 at 75hz, settings I KNOW it works at, in any mac os
> version.  When it asked me for the bus I checked the output of lspci,
> which listed it at 0001:01:0b.0 .  Unfortunately the reconfigure
> routine doesn't take the bus number in hex format, so I took a punt
> and said bus 1.
> 
> Now when I get through the boot sequence to when X11 should start I
> actually get a second or two of blank screen (which is more than I
> got before!) before returning to text mode.  Can anybody tell me
> where to look for it's reason for failure?  surely it's logging it
> somewhere?

you can look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log -- the "informational" messages
will start with (II) and the failures and warnings will start with
(ww).

But before you bother, you will either need to find the kernel
parameter that will activate your video OR find a well-supported video
card you can stick into the computer.

For older OldWorlds, here's your best source for general info:

http://penguinppc.org/

Which (among many other things) points to the model-specific pages for
netbsd (another Unix distribution -- not linux). Here's a page from
their site:

http://netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html

Here's a mirror of the same information oriented for Debian distros
(Ubuntu is a "Debian Child" distro)

http://simonraven.nuit.ca/macppc/models.shtml

so it looks like there's an Open Firmware bug you will have to patch
to get your video working with linux -- look for the information about
/chaos/control

I also dug through the Debian documentation pages, but for oldworld
information they usually point to penguinppc.org

So to get the video going on your 8600 you will apparently need to 1)
patch the Open Firmware and then 2) experiment with a couple of
parameters to the kernel for the ofb video driver (you'll pass those
parameters in a bootx setting).

I personally have not worked with one of those Macs so I don't know if
anyone has developed a "shortcut." I would suggest looking through the
documentation for older versions of yellowdog linux because that's
another PowerPC specific distro and sometimes someone there has a
trick that makes it easier.

p.s. it helps to reply to the message back to the list so you keep the
same thread... and if you edit the text above and put your next
response at the bottom it makes it much easier to follow exactly
what's being discussed.