I really hope some one here is knowledgeable about this...
My r128 card hangs indefinitely if any kind of acceleration is enabled. Running startx results in a black screen and I have to reboot with Alt+SysRq+REISUB. This was not caused by upgrading between any official releases of linux, xorg or my driver. It was caused because I was trying to hack my driver and I can tell you exactly how.
I was working on adding EXA support to xf86-video-r128. I successfully got as far as https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47866 and I still suggest that you accept this patch since it does not contain the dangerous part. The dangerous part came when I tried to support compositing as this needed some OUT_RING and OUTREG commands. I based this on the KAA approach: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/tree/hw/kdrive/ati?id=0cd662ea80579c317d706ebe04971bb29d0f9b4f r128_composite.c. When I was finished, I ended up with an r128_exa.c file that looked like this: http://pastebin.com/HHsESs9q. Now I realize that I may be asking a difficult question as many of you haven't worked on this stuff for years, but here's how it went.
I installed this new DDX and first tried to start the X server with EXA and DRI but the composite extension turned off. Just to make sure that everything that worked before still worked. However, it did not work. It gave me this log file: http://pastebin.com/XWYbtTcL showing the lines: R128(0): R128CCEWaitForIdle: (DEBUG) CCE idle took i = 1025 and R128(0): Idle timed out, resetting engine...
I then stupidly thought "okay, maybe the composite code that has been added hangs if composite is disabled so I'll enable composite as well as EXA and DRI" Doing that gave me the log file: http://pastebin.com/3RJBNhAx with the lines: (**) R128(0): Idle timed out: 64 entries, stat=0x80400040, probe=0x00200000, (EE) R128(0): Idle timed out, resetting engine..., (EE) R128(0): R128WaitForIdle: CCE stop -22, (EE) R128(0): R128WaitForIdle: CCE reset -22 and (EE) R128(0): R128WaitForIdle: CCE start -22
I get the same error if I switch back to XAA with DRI on. If I use XAA with DRI off, I get the log file: http://pastebin.com/VLEbsAfx with the line: (EE) R128(0): Idle timed out, resetting engine... As of this morning, the ONLY way for me to use X, regardless of what my package versions are is to specify "NoAccel" which is slow as hell. I've seen R128 infinite loop idling errors posted to mailing lists in the past. They are mostly posted by PPC users for whom the r128 driver never worked properly in the first place. They all say that they "fix" it by turning off acceleration. I obviously don't want this since my card worked perfectly with 2D and 3D acceleration for years and it's only my foolishness right now that broke it.
Does anyone know a way this can be fixed? Does ATI provide a tool that will reflash a VBIOS and get rid of this error? Or does one of you have / know how to write this kind of utility? Is it common to permanently brick a GPU if you try writing the wrong bit to a register? Like the ones that are written to in my r128_exa.c? If so I have even more respect for open source driver hackers.
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