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This page has information about accelerated XFree86 video drivers for the ATI Mach64 chipset on Linux. I have a Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop with the ATI Rage LT Pro AGP chipset with TV out, and the links here represent software I've gotten to work with my hardware. I have collected here links, information and patches concerning accelerated OpenGL, DVD/video playback and TV out support for ATI cards based on the Mach64.

(Partial) list of video cards this information applies to:
3D Rage Pro
All-in-Wonder Pro
Xpert 98/LCD/XL/@Play/@Work
3D Rage LT Pro
3D Rage XL
3D Rage Mobility (P/M/M1) (NOT Rage 128 Mobility)

Hardware accelerated OpenGL support

3D support for mach64 chips is available in the Mesa/DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure) drivers being developed in the Mesa3D project CVS. A DRI aware DDX driver on the server is also needed. The X.org tree now has such a driver, but DRI support is currently disabled by default at build time because the driver is not yet secure (see status page below for more info).

  • DRI Project homepage (The best place for current information)
  • Status and known issues for the mach64 DRI driver (not necessarily up-to-date)
  • Informal test results for the mach64 DRI driver. These are from older development branches.
  • I have a mini-HOWTO on compiling older branches of DRI. For the trunk or the current mach64 branch, see the instructions on the DRI page listed above.

XVideo and TV out support

XVideo support for the mach64 is now available in the stock XFree86 and X.org release drivers.

  • GATOS Project - for XVideo, TV-tuner and video capture support for All-in-Wonder cards (DRI and TV-out are not yet supported for mach64 in the standard GATOS driver).
  • XVideo patch against DRI - I created a patch which merged the GATOS ati.2 driver for mach64 into the mach64-0-0-6-branch DRI tree to provide a unified driver for accelerated 3D and XVideo. If you just need XVideo, pick up a current release of XFree86 or X.org, which support XVideo (but not DRI) on mach64 now. If you want both 3D and XVideo, I'd recommend building the current X.org DDX driver with DRI enabled, the client driver from Mesa CVS, and the DRM kernel module from DRI CVS. Check the DRI website and mailing list for how to do the build. The patches and binaries here are for those running XFree86 4.2.0 or 4.3.0.
  • TV out for mach64 - This page has a patch which can be applied to the standard GATOS driver or the (older) DRI branch, as well as patched GATOS binaries. Note that this patch is included in the XVideo patch against DRI (see above).

Open source DVD playback software for Linux

  • Xine - I've been using xine for some time now and I can recommend it. It has lots of plugins available and the project has hit the 1.0 milestone!
  • Ogle - has menu support (also integrated into xine now through the libdvdread library)
  • VideoLAN - aims to allow streaming playback to clients over a network.
  • MPlayer - I haven't tried this one yet, but it seems to be popular with a lot of users.


   

All images and text © 1998-2006 Leif L. Delgass, All Rights Reserved
(Unless otherwise specified).

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