Trying to get a Radeon HD 7750 working in an AmigaOne XE

I recently purchased a low profile Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 on eBay, with the 7750 I also purchased a PEX8112 Pci to Pci express x16 adapter for use with my AmigaOne XE.

The next day I received a message from the pex seller saying that it wasn't in stock anymore, it turned out that the supply of the card has dried up everywhere online.

Most places that sell the adapter only sell in bulk and the very few places that still sell them individually do so at a price of around 100$.



I figured that the only way the get the adapter is here from other Amiga users, as the PEX8112 was recommended by Hans de Ruiter for use with the Sam440 motherboards.




I am willing to pay for it and I will certainly post benchmarks when the 7750 is working, will be interesting to compare the bandwidth advantage of the AGP Radeon 9250 vs the massive power increase of the 7750 on PCI.


So could anyone spare their Pex card? or could anyone point me to where I can obtain the card inexpensively?

Both will be very appreciated.

I found 1 Sedna card on Amazon. Link

You can also buy them directly from Sedna's shop.

Link

Bear in mind that the card may not initialise on the XE. This is the case with anything above HD6000 cards on the Sam440 and is said to be down to Uboot. Since the XE's Uboot is older it's likely to have the same limitation unless something was different in the Sam440 version.

Do you have access the RadeonHD driver or do you just want to try and see if you get a display first? It may be worth asking A-EON if they can supply you with the limited demo driver included with FE for Sam460 for testing purposes.

I had an X1550 (PCI version) on my XE back in the days of the beta driver. It's been too long a time to remember specific tips but it's worth having 2 monitors handy while you're experimenting.

Remember that if you can't get this card to work that you can still use the adapter for older HD series cards. I know that the XE is capable of running at least HD4000 series cards.

Any update on this. Did you manage to source and adapter yet?

Finally.




I do not recommend buying from Sedna directly, as they can be quite slow to respond to emails.

E.g. it took something of a month to arrive and I was promised a tracking number which I still haven't recieved.



Anyway, the card turned out to have a PEX8111 chip (as stated on their website) and is correctly working




Best of all, the 7750 gets initialised during Uboot!
and is fully working!


After this I reinstalled my Radeon 9250 and purchased. downloaded and installed the Radeon HD v2 driver within the Enhancer software pack.

Swapped out the 9250 and put in the 7750 in a 33mhz pci slot,

OS4 kickstart loading and... nothing



It hasn't hung as the text cursor was still blinking but I noticed that the RadeonHD.chip
wasn't loaded.

Booted OS4 with the 9250, checked out kicklayout in the kickstart folder and sure enough it wasn't added to the list.

While it is my first time installing the Radeon HD driver, surely it should be automatically be added?

So I manually added it in, placing it underneath the the ATIRadeon.chip





Booting with the 9250 again removed and 7750 installed,

RadeonHD.chip loaded and.. out of range

Black screen, No OS4 loading splash screen.


So i tried booting with both the 9250 and 7750 in the hope that I could get past the OS4 loading splash screen and configure the card in OS4 but that doesn't work,
as only one of the two cards will get initialised, the other card will sit idle with a black screen and blinking cursor.

But I can investigate with the 9250, Sysmon properly detects the 7750 with chipset name and model numbers (7750/8740/250E)




Ranger also detects the 7750 alongside the 9250, "Command: disconnected"





A posseble solution I'm thinking of is disabling the IDE DMA and "USB DMA" as stated on Hans de Ruiter's HDRLab
I'm not sure how to quickly check if my AmigaOne has the DMA fix for ide, but I have onboard IDE and USB disabled in uboot and commented out of my
kickstartlayout which doesn't seem to help.



So at the moment I'm stuck, I am having issues with my Amisphere account so I can't go onto the A-eon forums yet.

Here a link to an archive with my kickstart layout file, more pictures of the cards and pci detection software
and videos of booting with the 7750 and what the 7750 is doing during OS4 with the 9250 installed.

http://www.filedropper.com/pex8111-7750

Which version of PCIGraphics.card is installed on your system?

@Rob

Version 53.15 from 10/13/2016


and my RadeonHD.chip is 2.22 from 03/25/2017, probably a newer version is available via enhancer's updater
but I still need to wait for my Amisphere account to be fixed.

A-eon's outdated contact captcha isn't helping.

@Helloworld

Your PCIGraphics.card and RadeonHD.chip are the most recent versions.

Have you get a separate monitor driver for the 7750 in devs monitors?

@Rob

Good one! I haven't thought of that.


No, there is no new monitor driver installed, there is only 'Radeon' for the
old ATI cards.


Can I just dublicate the old Radeon monitor (to e.g. RadeonHD) and change its boardname tooltype to the new card?




if so, what is the boardname of my 7750?

Could anyone please give me the boardname of their 7750 / Radeon HD monitor driver?

As a quick guess I changed it into "RadeonHD" but that didn't do it.





Or is it not that simple and do I need a specific Radeon HD monitor driver?

I can't find one in my Enhancer pack installation files.

@Helloworld

If you change the BOARDNAME to RadeonHD, you also need to change the CMPLENGTH to 8. It has to match the length of the name, or rather, the length of what you want it to check of the name in order to see it as different from any other monitor icon's BOARDNAME.

This means you must also change the other icon, so the BOARDNAME there is e.g. Radeon9250 (and hence the CMPLENGTH 10), otherwise "Radeon" and 6 would still match both.

At least this is how I remember it (can't test it myself atm).

Best regards,

Niels

Make a copy of the monitor driver or look in storage to see if a suitable monitor driver is in there.

It doesn't matter what you call board name. It's seem to just be an identifier used in the monitors tab of screenmode prefs.

You should be able to activate the monitor driver by double clicking on it. When testing don't put the monitor driver in monitors, just in case it hangs the system and you end up with the system hanging on boot up thereafter.

@Rob

@Rob @nbache


Thank you so much for your suggestions Rob and Niels.


I dublicated the old monitor driver in Ramdisk and named it RadeonHD with
CMPLENGHT adjusted.



When I double click it I get this error





I am fairy new to AmigaOS, so how would I know that this monitor is
assigned or trying to assign to the 7750?


At least it shows up in my screenmode prefs.




But unfortunately while the 7750 is regonized as a VGA controller, it doesn't actually get "mounted" as
a graphics board.

There is only graphics board 0/1, the 9250




I also tried renaming the ATI Radeon driver 'Radeon9250' and now when I reboot the 9250 uses the RadeonHD
monitor driver :P

I have a dvd drive with OS4 by hand so if something goes wrong I can always boot off the disc and revert any
changes I made,
so go nuts with your suggestions!


Curiously, looking in my OS4 FE disc there are three seperate driver monitors for the permedia, radeon and
3dfx voodoo.

The Radeon and Voodoo monitor drivers have identical settings and are identical in size, so why would there
be a need for two seemingly identical monitor
drivers? perhaps there's more than that meets the eye?

Perhaps a Radeon HD user could PM me their monitor driver or would that not allowed here since it could be
considered part of a commercial product?





I don't think that the issue lies with the PEX8111 adapter.

PCI cards without any bridge chip and bridge chips themselves resides in "PCI bus 0" (according to uboot's
PCI scan command)

AGP & 66Mhz cards resides in bus 1

Any card behind a bridge chip resides in bus 2 and higher,

My 7750 resides in bus 2. (PEX8111 is in bus 0)

I also have this multi I/O card with a Sil3112 sata, NEC USB and firewire chips connected with a bridge chip
which resides in bus 3 and it works flawlessly,
typing this with a usb keyboard connected to that card.

I can also rearrange the cards IRL so that the 7750 is in bus 3 and the multi I/O card is in bus 2,
which makes no difference, Multi I/O is fine and 7750 bails out at the OS4 loading splash screen or is
asleep when I boot with AGP.

You might need to use Picasso96Mode in the prefs to set up the monitor driver. We had to do this back in the day when setting up a new video card.

There's a guide to P96Mode here.

http://web.archive.org/web/2002122108 ... /graphics/graphics3.shtml

Best to check first if the board appears in the "attach setting to" menu alongside whatever the 9250 identifies itself as. My R9 280 shows up as "Board0: Radeon HD 7900 Series".

I don't think it's problem sharing monitor files since there are many old ones on Aminet. PM me your email and I'll send a selection of the monitor driver files I have here.

If you still get any results it might be worth getting in direct touch with Hans.

@Helloworld

If you're trying to use two graphics cards, then you need a "PCIGraphics" monitor in DEVS:Monitors/ with BOARDNAME=PCIGraphics and CMPLENGTH=11 set as tooltypes.

Also, if you have a "Radeon" monitor driver, then it'll also be used for your Radeon HD 7750 if it's the only card in your system.

Hans

@Rob @Hans

So I deleted the RadeonHD monitor driver, dublicated the ATI Radeon driver and
changed it to PCIGraphics

Reboot and..





Progress! "Command" is no longer Disconnected!


But it still didn't mount as a graphics board, double clicking
the new monitor driver still gives the same error message.


Gave a shot at making Picasso96 screenmodes but the 7750 didn't show
up in the list of devices, only 9250 or assign to no board.


Is there a program for AmigaOS that is similair to device manager on Windows? so that I can enable/disable PCI boards?

or is there anyway to "poke" the 7750 to life in OS4?
it still only shows a blackscreen with a blinking text cursor.

And is it normal that the 7750 doesn't have a 'display controller' but the 9250 does?

@Rob PM sent!

@Helloworld

Use Screen prefs to create a screen for the 2nd graphics card. AmigaOS don't have any screen mirroring or other such features.

@Helloworld

Quote:
Did you set the BOARDNAME and CMPLENGTH tooltypes as described?

What do you mean with "didn't mount?" What does ScreenMode prefs show? Do you have a monitor connected to that graphics card (when the machine starts up)? It won't detect any modes without a monitor connected.


I'd expect it to give the same error message if you put it in DEVS:Monitors/, because it gets loaded on startup. So, double-clicking it tries to load it for a second time.

If you don't see any modes starting with RadeonHD: in ScreenMode prefs, then try adding some manual modes for the PCIGraphics monitor file using the monitors tab in ScreenMode prefs (which is what I assume TSK meant). You'll need to restart before those changes take effect. Normally the driver will detect the monitor's modes automatically, but sometimes a bad cable or bugs in the card's AtomBIOS prevents that from happening.

Quote:
With the driver properly installed, it should just work. The fact that it's still showing a blinking cursor, says that the RadeonHD.chip driver isn't starting up.

Quote:
Yes.

Hans

@Hans

Quote:

I have set the tooltypes accordingly






Quote:

That while the system can find the 7750, it doesn't use it as a graphics board.

So a program such as software rendered Quake can only find Board 0, the 9250, and no other board.





Ranger sees the 7750 in the PCI Bus tab while simultaneously doesn't show it in the list of graphics boards (graphics board list being pressed down here)





and indeed this is reflected in Screenmode prefs




The 7750 is connected to a different monitor (HP Compaq LA 1956x) with different specifications (1280x1024@75hz, Horizontal refresh 24-83khz. Vertical 50-76hz), I also tried switching the monitors by swapping the DVI cables at the cards' end with no success.

Connecting the 7750 via VGA will make it boot at a lower resolution of
720X400 instead of 1280X1024 but made no further difference.

The last port the 7750 has is a mini HDMI port, I have no mini HDMI to DVI adapter to test it at the moment.

There's also mini display port but I think that isn't supported at the moment even with a DVI active adapter, right?

Quote:

PCIGraphics already has some manual modes and I also tried booting with detect settings automatically.




Quote:

Interesting, so it might be worth plugging in it a Windows PC and see if there's a newer version of the bios to flash?

e.g. https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/12 ... pphire-hd7750-1024-120611

@TSK

I have tried that but as there is no "Board 1" (7750) to select from
I have no idea how to procede any further.

@Helloworld
Quote:
Not yet. The fact that the 7750 still has the flashing cursor after AmigaOS is fully booted says that the driver isn't being loaded. At bare minimum, the monitor should go black and switch to standby (the init code shuts down the output).

I've just checked the driver source-code, and your graphics card's ID is in the list (0x683F). You already have RadeonHD.chip in your Kicklayout and in SYS:Kickstart, so I'm not sure why the driver wouldn't be loading.

Could you try executing the following after booting (and after double-clicking on the PCIGraphics monitor icon):
dumpdebugbuffer ram:log.txt

Then have a look if ram:log.txt gives any clues.

Hans

@Hans


https://pastebin.com/Cnnrc26L - for entire log.


graphics.library AltiVec/VMX enabled
graphics.library PPC74xx optimizations enabled

RadeonHD.card (0): RadeonHD.chip 2.22 (25.3.2017)
RadeonHD (2): Graphics card name is: Radeon HD 7700 Series
RadeonHD (2): Identified the chipset as: VERDE


RadeonHD (2): If - and only if - your card does not work or does not work optimally
please submit a bug report at:
Amigadeveloper URL removed before posting here on Amigans
Remember to include the driver version, and the following card details:
0x683F:0x174B:0xE231: <name of board>
and *please* describe the problems you are seeing in detail.


RadeonHD.chip (0): ERROR: PCI BIOS ROM signature not found
RadeonHD.chip (0): ERROR: Could not obtain the AtomBIOS
RadeonHD.chip (0): RadeonHD card closed



_________________________
*Edit*

I didn't notice that the debug buffer would not empty after a warm reboot
so I updated the link to a 'cleaner' log.

PCI BIOS ROM signature... as in legacy parallel PCI?