Ali M1541 chipset problem

[perun]

Hello!

I have Gigabyte GA 5A motherboard with Ali M1541 chipset, and riva tnt2 m64 pro graphic card with
red hat 7.3 running. I tried to install nvidia's drivers for my card, but the X server failed to start.
When I looked to my xf86config-4 I found out that nvidia kernel modul couldn't be initialised.
Then I found out that nvidia disabled AGP support for M1541 chipset. I have compilled the kernel
with agpgart enabled, but that didn't help.
When I do : cat /proc/pci/drivers/nvidida/agp/status, I got the message: agp disabled.

Does anyone know how tu enable support for ali chipset ?

Thanks!

[Thunderbird]

Check your xfree86 log file (located in /var/log) for the problem. AGP will be enabled after you succesfully started X the first time. (after each boot)

Make sure AGP is set to 1X in the bios. AGP is not really needed (if you can't get it to work).

Your motherboard is one of the worst ones with AGP ever created. The ALI 1541 has a lot of AGP related problems. This is a piece ripped from the driver docs (cut & paste is easier than rewriting it ..):

o ALi chipsets: ALi1541 and ALi1647
On ALi1541 and ALi1647 chipsets, NVIDIA drivers disable AGP to work around timing issues and signal integrity issues.

[renaaqu]

Have a look at :

http://www.blutsuppe.de/

You may find there good sugestions as to how to enable AGP and make it function with ALI 1541 chipset.

Regards:

Renato

[Soul-Crusher]

Here are some of the ALi-specific issues listed in the driver documentation:

The following tips may help stabilize problematic ALI systems:

o Disable TURBO AGP MODE in the BIOS.

o When using a P5A upgrade to BIOS Revision 1002 BETA 2.

o When using 1007, 1007A or 1009 adjust the IO Recovery Time to
4 cycles.

o AGP is disabled by default on some ALi chipsets (ALi1541, ALi1647)
to work around severe system stability problems with these chipsets.

See the comments for NVreg_EnableALiAGP in os-registry.c to force
AGP on anyway.

And there are even more TNT-specific issues :(