Lucid Puppy Video issue with Radeon HD 5450

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scott2907
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Joined: Fri 11 May 2012, 14:55

Lucid Puppy Video issue with Radeon HD 5450

#1 Post by scott2907 »

Hi there
I have Puppy 5.2.8 and a Radeon HD 5450 video card.
I loaded puppy on my intel laptop and installed it to USB flash card using an encrypted pupsave file.
This works fine on my laptop, but I have issues when I try to load it on my desktop.
I cannot get full resolution on my monitor and I have problems with blank screens when Puppy goes into text mode programs after X has started. For example, if I start the xorgconfig the screen just goes blank. I've tried loading the ATI driver- and that seems to have installed- but the driver doesn't appear to load on startup. I think this may have something to do with kernel mode setting, as I have similar problems on Lubuntu, which is cured by turning off modesetting, but pfix=nomodeset doesn't seem to change anything.
In terms of the monitor resolution I know that my monitor doesn't probe well. I've tried doing a cvt, xrandr & addmode but that says that my desired resolution of 1440x900x24 60hz is too high (this works ok on ubuntu 11), so I'm stuck there as well.
Has anyone else experienced these problems?
Thanks
Scott

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Semme
Posts: 8399
Joined: Sun 07 Aug 2011, 20:07
Location: World_Hub

#2 Post by Semme »

Hi Scott- Welcome to Puppy!

Are you saying you've had no luck downloading the suggested driver from the Quickpet, drivers tab?

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bigpup
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Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#3 Post by bigpup »

If you are using Puppy, installed to a bootable USB flash drive, that has been setup for a specific computer, with settings and video drivers. It will not work well on another computer that does not have that same specific hardware.
To use the same flash drive on two different computers you need to do this:
On new computer.
Boot with option puppy pfix=ram
Reboot.
make a new save file for the new computer.
(give it an identifying name)
After reboot running with the new save file.
Install any needed drivers and set up needed settings.
Now when you boot Puppy you get option to choose which save file to use.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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davids45
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Joined: Sun 26 Nov 2006, 23:33
Location: Chatswood, NSW

#4 Post by davids45 »

G'day scott2907,

This relates to a desktop so may not be quite the same for a USB Pup.

I have a Radeon HD5450 card in my newest desktop and have found the default driver that comes with debpups and upups (excellent Pups from pemasu and playdayz) fails when dropping from X or on closing down - black screen with no text but the computer is still running so it is not "freezing".
This display failure meant I could not create a Save-file with a Frugal install because the required text was not displaying on close-down when a Save file is usually created.

Some Pups now let you create a Save file before shutting down which helps - but there are still no messages once you stop X on shutting down or re-booting these Pup types.

So, with Lupus and Exprimos for example, I regularly install a pet of the ATI proprietary driver almost immediately on first start-up - before I hit restart-X during the setting of my personal settings. I now have a stock of ATI-fglrx pets on my data partition to choose from. The ATI-fglrx pet does not seem to need to match the kernel of the affected Pup, which is a happy situation.

Once the ati-fglrx pet is installed, I open a console and type:

aticonfig --initial

and hit <Enter>. A console message then says the new driver is going to be likely to work (can't recall the words exactly).
Then I restart-X and usually see ATI menu items appear in System> menu and if clicked, the ATI Catalyst start-up box appears.

Now, when I close my Lupus and Exprimos, I see the usual closing down text and do get the offer to create a Save file.

I also install an ATI-fglrx driver in Full Lupus & Exprimos, even though I don't need a Save file. It's just nice to see the closing down messages with Full installs too.

Slackos are not affected - I assume the generic radeon slackware driver for our cards is not faulty - so I'd suggest you try a slacko to check the card behaviour. I think racy is also unaffected so must also have a better radeon driver as far as the HD5450 cards are concerned.

Good luck,

David S.

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Semme
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Joined: Sun 07 Aug 2011, 20:07
Location: World_Hub

#5 Post by Semme »

Hey David- nice <meat'n potatoes> reply.. Hopefully for Scott- it's one he can work with..

scott2907
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri 11 May 2012, 14:55

#6 Post by scott2907 »

davids45 wrote:
So, with Lupus and Exprimos for example, I regularly install a pet of the ATI proprietary driver almost immediately on first start-up - before I hit restart-X during the setting of my personal settings. ...
...
Slackos are not affected - I assume the generic radeon slackware driver for our cards is not faulty - so I'd suggest you try a slacko to check the card behaviour. I think racy is also unaffected so must also have a better radeon driver as far as the HD5450 cards are concerned.

Good luck,

David S.
David - thanks, this is a very comprehensive reply and very very helpful. I'd already started down this road thanks to bigpup's equally kind reply, but you just made it a whole lot easier.
I'm sure that I'll be able to get this working now with a little more persistance, and the usb stick should work fine with my radeon desktop using your method. This fulfills most of what I want to do, but I also wanted to be able to shove my USB stick into any desktop and make it work too. I guess the best way for me to do this is to do some work on placing a Live ISO on the stick, rather than an install? Then placing two pup_saves on the disk - one VESA generic and one for my radeon.
Sounds like a plan anyway.
Also I'll try the slackwares. It sounds like they'll shoot my problem down right from the box.
And yes, Ubuntu and all it's family do the same on the radeon. Its a shame that the card isn't a bit cleverer when it comes to OS's trying to use generic methods/drivers on them.
Thanks for all your help guys and also for the warm welcome.
Consider me a convert.
Cheers.
Scott

scott2907
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri 11 May 2012, 14:55

#7 Post by scott2907 »

Well that was easy. Slacko did the job out of the box. Ubuntu derivatives clearly don't handle the hardware well in this case. I'd much rather run lucid because it is familiar to me, but slacko gives me what I need now without messing about and that gives me more time to play with my new os. Next step beautification!
Thanks for your help again.

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