X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

AmigaOne X1000 platform specific issues.
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mbrantley
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X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by mbrantley »

Been troubleshooting a problem I am having in common with Epsilon since yesterday. We both have new Radeon R9 270X cards and the new RadeonHD 2.7 driver. I see early boot screens but then am left with blank display when Workbench should appear. For the record for this troubleshooting I have removed my second graphics card. The R9 270X is the only one in the machine. Symptom is same when booting from FE CD-ROM.

Any advice will be welcome.

EDIT: I misspoke.... Epsilon's problem is a little different, but I will let him explain.
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Hans
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Re: X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by Hans »

mbrantley wrote:Been troubleshooting a problem I am having in common with Epsilon since yesterday. We both have new Radeon R9 270X cards and the new RadeonHD 2.7 driver. I see early boot screens but then am left with blank display when Workbench should appear. For the record for this troubleshooting I have removed my second graphics card. The R9 270X is the only one in the machine. Symptom is same when booting from FE CD-ROM.

Any advice will be welcome.

EDIT: I misspoke.... Epsilon's problem is a little different, but I will let him explain.
You could try connecting the monitor via a different output (NOTE: DisplayPort is NOT supported), and using the debug version of the driver to see if it gives any clues.

Other than that, you may have no choice but to return the card (if you can), and try a different one. Occasionally we do find cards that simply don't want to work properly with the driver.

Whether you manage to get it working or not, please send me the full details of the card (manufacturer, model, SKU#, etc.), so that I can update the compatibility list accordingly.

Hans
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
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sundown
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Re: X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by sundown »

Hate replying for others, but Mike, me, & Epsilon chat in IRC a lot. Mike plans on returning his 270X in the morning & probably won't read your reply till after. He also tried booting linux, but got a black screen as well, so thinking the card is bad.

Epsilon however was able to boot into linux ok with his 270X, but not WB, he did get a a blank window with title bar. I'm sure he will post more info with his experience soon. Some 270s have 2GB of memory, Epsilon's 270X has 4GB, we were wondering if that was a problem with os4?

Ken
X1000 - Antec Solo case, 4GB DDR2 mem, XFX R9 270 gfx card, Plextor DVD, 2 Samsung 1TB F3 HDD, RTL-8139 network card, Cooler Master Silent Pro 600W PSU
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Epsilon
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Re: X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by Epsilon »

sundown wrote:Hate replying for others, but Mike, me, & Epsilon chat in IRC a lot. Mike plans on returning his 270X in the morning & probably won't read your reply till after. He also tried booting linux, but got a black screen as well, so thinking the card is bad.

Epsilon however was able to boot into linux ok with his 270X, but not WB, he did get a a blank window with title bar. I'm sure he will post more info with his experience soon. Some 270s have 2GB of memory, Epsilon's 270X has 4GB, we were wondering if that was a problem with os4?

Ken
I purchased a brand new Sapphire R9 270X with 4GB memory. As sundown mentioned, it boots into Ubuntu Remix on my X1000 fine, no issues. I also put it into my Core I7 PC and confirmed it works perfectly in Windows 7 displaying up to 2560x1600 on my 30" display so it definitely works correctly.

Model details:
Sapphire R9 270X 4G GDDR5 PCI-E DVI-I / DVI-D / HDMI / DP Dual-X OC WITH BOOST
Product: 299-1E271-B00SA
SKU# 11217-04-41G

On AmigaOS4.1 Final Edition, I have the latest 2.7 Radeon HD drivers, Warp3D installed with the latest MiniGL installed from os4depot.net. Normally my X1000 has a Radeon 5450 HD and Radeon RV730 installed, with monitors for each, plus the PCIGraphics monitor needed for dual display (all in dev/monitors). Screenmode is 1920x1080 for both cards.

To have the 270X installed, I removed the 5450 monitor from DEVS/Monitors, and copied the Radeon RV730 monitor and modified it to have Monitor name "Radeon", Tooltypes changed board name of "Radeon" and COMPLENGTH of 6. DDC auto detect is not used - all resolutions are supported by the LG 24" monitor connected to it and are 60Hz.

I confirmed that with that new configuration file I could still boot the X1000 with the Radeon RV730 card installed by itself - it uses the "Radeon" monitor, even if the Radeon RV730 monitor is present too!

I then added the 270X and removed the RV730. On power on the X1000 boot logo shows, the AmigaOS4.1 Boot screen appears, and then a strange blue Workbench screen appears - link to picture here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/29895888@ ... otostream/

The intro sound plays over the top of this screen, but the background, icons, mouse and keyboard cannot be used.

Looking at the screen, it looks like the same resolution as the AmigaOS4.1 boot screen, which I guess is 800x600x256. So I put the RV730 card back in, booted up as normal and changed the screen resolution to 800x600x256 and changed the gfx card back to the 270x again.

This time the X1000 boot logo, AmigaOS4.1 boot screen appear as normal, and then it gives me a similar wb screen to the one above, but this time not blue, but looks like the colours are right. However the background, icons, mouse and keyboard still don't work:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/29895888@ ... otostream/

(I also tested booting the AmigaOS4.1 FE install DVD and get the same screen as above)

I then changed back to the RV730 and removed all wbstartup items but no change when I put the 270X back in. I also tried removing non-essential stuff from the user-startup too but no change.

I tried DVI and DVI-D connectors (as I have two displays I connect both on each boot so I can see) - the display issue is the same on both connectors.

Looks suspiciously like AmigaOS4 is unable to init the resolutions on the R9 270X graphics card above the default 800x600 of the boot logo.

If I use the debug version, what am I looking for - does it output via serial port? I don't have a serial cable to capture it if it does I am sorry to say.

I can't return the 270x as it is not faulty. The vendor tests "faulty cards" and won't swap or exchange or refund unless faulty.

As you can imagine I am very frustrated with this whole situation and would like some help to fix the problem so I can use the Warp3D support with the R9 270X supported video card.

At this point I have no idea what else I can try. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Catcha,
Epsilon
Last edited by Epsilon on Fri Apr 03, 2015 7:38 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by Hans »

sundown wrote:Hate replying for others, but Mike, me, & Epsilon chat in IRC a lot. Mike plans on returning his 270X in the morning & probably won't read your reply till after. He also tried booting linux, but got a black screen as well, so thinking the card is bad.
Well, if Linux won't use his card either, then the card may well be faulty. Or, it just doesn't work with the A1-X1000 (years ago I had an nVidia card that didn't work with one PC, but was fine with another; it's rare, but can happen).
sundown wrote:Epsilon however was able to boot into linux ok with his 270X, but not WB, he did get a a blank window with title bar. I'm sure he will post more info with his experience soon. Some 270s have 2GB of memory, Epsilon's 270X has 4GB, we were wondering if that was a problem with os4?
No. The amount of VRAM has never been an issue. We do have trouble with Southern Islands cards that have DDR3 RAM instead of GDDR, but all 270X cards are supposed to have GDDR5 RAM, so that should be fine too.

Hans
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
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Re: X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by Hans »

Epsilon wrote:I can't return the 270x as it is not faulty. The vendor tests "faulty cards" and won't swap or exchange or refund unless faulty.
Really? Normally if the card doesn't work with your machine then you can return it. I'm also used to shops having a 30 day returns policy (provided that it's returned in "as new" condition).
Epsilon wrote:If I use the debug version, what am I looking for - does it output via serial port? I don't have a serial cable to capture it if it does I am sorry to say.
The default is for the debug output to go to memory, but if you can't use the keyboard and mouse then you have no way to dump that to disk. So, without a serial cable we're not going to get any debugging info.
At this point I have no idea what else I can try. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
What happens if you try booting from the AmigaOS 4.1 FE CD? It contains the lite driver, but that's just a cut down version of the real thing.

One thing worth checking is if you have the latest firmware installed. Sorry, can't remember how to do that; hopefully someone who does will help (or, maybe the manual will have details). The latest CFE version should be available from A-EON's website. An earlier version of the A1-X1000's firmware had a bug in it that caused Radeon HD 6xxx cards to fail with a Machine Check Exception. Basically, a single register write by CFE caused the entire graphics card to lock up as soon as AmigaOS tried to use it. That bug cost me over a week of development time. Fortunately, I also have a Sam460, and plugging it into that confirmed that the card and the driver were actually okay.

Anyway, if a CFE bug can take down a 6xxx series card, then it could also cause serious trouble with a 7xxx series card. It sounds like you've only used HD 5xxx and older cards so far, so it's entirely possible that you've been using an older version of CFE. I kind of hope that a buggy CFE version is the cause of your troubles, as I'm out of ideas otherwise.

Hans
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
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Re: X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by Epsilon »

Hans wrote:What happens if you try booting from the AmigaOS 4.1 FE CD? It contains the lite driver, but that's just a cut down version of the real thing.

One thing worth checking is if you have the latest firmware installed. Sorry, can't remember how to do that; hopefully someone who does will help (or, maybe the manual will have details). The latest CFE version should be available from A-EON's website. An earlier version of the A1-X1000's firmware had a bug in it that caused Radeon HD 6xxx cards to fail with a Machine Check Exception. Basically, a single register write by CFE caused the entire graphics card to lock up as soon as AmigaOS tried to use it. That bug cost me over a week of development time. Fortunately, I also have a Sam460, and plugging it into that confirmed that the card and the driver were actually okay.

Anyway, if a CFE bug can take down a 6xxx series card, then it could also cause serious trouble with a 7xxx series card. It sounds like you've only used HD 5xxx and older cards so far, so it's entirely possible that you've been using an older version of CFE. I kind of hope that a buggy CFE version is the cause of your troubles, as I'm out of ideas otherwise.

Hans
I tried booting from the AmigaOS4.1 FE CD - same screen comes up. I tried booting from another HD containing amigaos4.1.6 with 2.4 drivers and get same screen too. (looks more like 3.1 screen but same issues).

To my knowledge there has been no update to CFE since the dual display support was added in late 2012. I'll take a look though just in case.

Catcha,
Epsilon
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Re: X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by Hans »

Epsilon wrote:I tried booting from the AmigaOS4.1 FE CD - same screen comes up. I tried booting from another HD containing amigaos4.1.6 with 2.4 drivers and get same screen too. (looks more like 3.1 screen but same issues).
Okay, so it's definitely not a "bad OS install" problem.
To my knowledge there has been no update to CFE since the dual display support was added in late 2012. I'll take a look though just in case.
I don't remember there being a CFE update for dual display support, but the serial log from my A1-X1000 says:
CFE version PAS-2.0.30 for NEMO (64bit,MP,BE,PPC)
Build Date: Fri Jun 8 16:04:49 CEST 2012

However, I may be using a test version sent to me by Hans-Joerg, and not the official update.

Hans
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Re: X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by Epsilon »

Hans wrote:I don't remember there being a CFE update for dual display support, but the serial log from my A1-X1000 says:
CFE version PAS-2.0.30 for NEMO (64bit,MP,BE,PPC)
Build Date: Fri Jun 8 16:04:49 CEST 2012

However, I may be using a test version sent to me by Hans-Joerg, and not the official update.

Hans
Actually, the whole thing is no longer an issue - My X1000 is now completely non-functional.

Following your comment about CFE, I updated the CFE with the version from the a-eon website loaded from usb stick (which I am fairly sure was the same version that I already had), but the rom signature after flashing didn't match the a-eon cfe upgrade instructions of what should be there, no matter how many times I checked and double checked what I typed in (I have done it before). I must have retried 10-15 times without rebooting following every step carefully. After power off and power on, unsurprisingly it didn't boot.

I switched to the rescue jumper on the X1000 (never used it before) to boot the backup bios but it doesn't boot either.

So no X1000 any more - completely bricked. Was nice while it lasted. Time to cry I think. Wish I never tried to do this now.

Catcha,
Epsilon
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Re: X1000 boots to black with Radeon R9 270X and 2.7 driver

Post by ddni »

Disaster!
Hope you get it sorted.
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