Re: Debian "Jessie" on Apple eMac 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 (7447A) with ATI Radeon 9200 gives "Black Screen of Death"
Hi Francesco,
On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 9:30 AM, aggaz <aggaz@paranoici.org> wrote:
> 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?
Sorry to hear your trouble. Just to put things in order, when you say
"I get a working console", could you please dump the output of:
$ cat /proc/fb
to your email. Also for real complete bug report you could run
"/usr/share/bug/xorg/script 3>/tmp/script.log" and attach it here.
Finally what is the status of the firmware, just send:
$ apt-cache policy firmware-linux-nonfree
> 2. Where can I find a downloadable iso for Debian Wheezy PPC? It seems I
> can download only "Jessie" and testing.
https://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/debian-installer/
-M
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