Debian "Jessie" on Apple eMac 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 (7447A) with ATI Radeon 9200 gives "Black Screen of Death"

[aggaz <aggaz@paranoici.org>]

Dear list,

I have an Apple eMac 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 (7447A) with ATI Radeon 9200.

For several years I used Debian "Wheezy" on it without issues.

Some day ago I upgraded to "Jessie" and graphics stopped working.

I also tried to make a fresh install of Jessie that later I upgraded to
"testing", but I always have the same problem.

The problem is that after boot I have the so called "Black Screen of
Death", which means that the monitor goes black and this is not related
to Xorg, in fact I can not even see a shell prompt.

I read everithing I could to fix it.

I my understanding the problem is that new radeon drivers require KMS
but KMS is for some reason not compatible with my machine.

The only way to have an almost working screen is to disable radeon-kms
either by adding to yaboot.conf the line:

append="nomodeset"

or in /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf the line:

options radeon modeset=0

In both cases, I get a working console, but a messed up X.

I see weird colors and X is ot usable.

Now I read that I could fix it as described here by disabling
open-firmware frame-buffer and using the driver fbdev, which is slow.

So, my solution is to go back to wheezy.

My questions:

1. Am I missing something? Is there a way to use Jessie with radeon drivers?

2. Where can I find a downloadable iso for Debian Wheezy PPC? It seems I
can download only "Jessie" and testing.

Thank you for your help, best regards.

Francesco