Mailing List Archive

See below.

At 06:33 PM 4/30/2003 +0100, James Fidell wrote:
>I picked up a Geforce 2 MX400 on Ebay last week. Well, at least, that's
>what it says on the box, the instructions, and that's what the BIOS says
>when it boots. The PCI scan says it's an S3 Savage 2000 though, based
>on the vendor ID and product ID reported for the card.
>
>Obviously the nvidia drivers completely fail to work, but if I start X
>with the Savage drivers, everything appears to be fine.
>
>This seems fairly weird to me and I'll try to find another card that
>does the expected thing, but in the meantime is it possible to get the
>TV-out working on this card in RedHat 8.0, assuming it really is a
>Savage model?

Yes and no.

Yes: the standard Savage X driver supports TV-out, though you may need the
"s3switch" utility to turn TV-out on.

No: The Savage X driver does not support xv (xVideo) on the Savage 2000.
The developer classes this as an unresolved bug, but it has been unresolved
for a long time now, so don't hold your breath. xShm works (with xine, for
example), but it consumes a lot of CPU cycles so is probably not a good
option for Myth.

For details on both of these, go to http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html

Quoting Ray Olszewski (ray@comarre.com):

> Yes: the standard Savage X driver supports TV-out, though you may need the
> "s3switch" utility to turn TV-out on.

Well, setting TvOnly and PAL options in XFree86Config turn off the
display on the monitor at least, so perhaps I won't need that.

> No: The Savage X driver does not support xv (xVideo) on the Savage 2000.
> The developer classes this as an unresolved bug, but it has been unresolved
> for a long time now, so don't hold your breath. xShm works (with xine, for
> example), but it consumes a lot of CPU cycles so is probably not a good
> option for Myth.

This does appear to be a problem. I've downloaded the latest X drivers
and get a blank screen with the correct sound when I try to watch anything.
The Savage driver web page suggests that this is only a problem in 24-bit
mode. It doesn't work for me in 16-bit or 8-bit mode though.

Can myth be forced to use xShm (and if so, how)? Or do I have to remember
how X works and do some coding to make that happen?

As an aside, the strangest thing is this output from the X logs:

(II) SAVAGE(0): VESA BIOS detected
(II) SAVAGE(0): VESA VBE Version 3.0
(II) SAVAGE(0): VESA VBE Total Mem: 32768 kB
(II) SAVAGE(0): VESA VBE OEM: NV Incorporated. MX / MX400
(II) SAVAGE(0): VESA VBE OEM Software Rev: 2.0
(II) SAVAGE(0): VESA VBE OEM Vendor: NV Incorporated.
(II) SAVAGE(0): VESA VBE OEM Product: MX / MX400
(II) SAVAGE(0): VESA VBE OEM Product Rev: Rev C
(--) SAVAGE(0): Chip: id 9102, "Savage2000"
(--) SAVAGE(0): Engine: "Savage2000"
(--) SAVAGE(0): mapping MMIO @ 0xef800000 with size 0x80000
(==) SAVAGE(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
(--) SAVAGE(0): probed videoram: 32768k

Clearly the card is recognised as a Savage 2000, but it definitely *says*
it's an nVidia card.

James

At 01:15 AM 5/1/2003 +0100, James Fidell wrote:
>[...]
> > No: The Savage X driver does not support xv (xVideo) on the Savage 2000.
> > The developer classes this as an unresolved bug, but it has been
> unresolved
> > for a long time now, so don't hold your breath. xShm works (with xine, for
> > example), but it consumes a lot of CPU cycles so is probably not a good
> > option for Myth.
>
>This does appear to be a problem. I've downloaded the latest X drivers
>and get a blank screen with the correct sound when I try to watch anything.
>The Savage driver web page suggests that this is only a problem in 24-bit
>mode. It doesn't work for me in 16-bit or 8-bit mode though.

You found the wrong section of the Web page. What you are referring to is a
general (and quite old) comment about the Savage driver. Elsewhere on the
same page is a specific (and quite recent) caution specifically about the
Savage 2000 -- "xvideo on the Savage2000 still seems to be broken. I don't
know when I'll be able to get around to this." That is the bug report I was
referring to.