Hyperion Entertainment Message Boards

Hi I just changed my 4850 to 6850. The swap went well, and the 6850 seems to run well.
However the monitors tab in screenmode prefs is greyed out for both the 6850 and pci 9250.
Previously, with the 4850 & 9250 it was available.

Is this normal behaviour?

Thanks.

When I first got my X1000 with only a 4850 the monitors tab was greyed out for me as well. That caused me a lot of stress but eventually I got it to not be greyed out. I just can't remember how! I'll try to recall while hoping someone else will respond with the answer in the meantime. I really need to start making more notes....

I found the cause of the monitor tab being greyed out.

In the devs/monitor file for the 6850, I had the BOARDNAME=Radeon HD 6850 and CMPLENGTH=14.
By changing the BOARDNAME=Radeon HD 6 and CMPLENGTH=11, I re-enabled the monitor tab.

This seems to be reproducable:
Setting the BOARDNAME=Radeon HD 68 and CMPLENGTH=12, the monitor tab is visible.
Setting the BOARDNAME=Radeon HD 685 and CMPLENGTH=13, the monitor tab is greyed out.

It seems that the max characters allowed in BOARDNAME is 12. Am I mistaken? Is this a limitation of the naming convention?

Right, after investigation, I have found that this is yet another limitation of our aging graphics system (there's even a comment in the source which says as much). As a workaround for missing functionality, ScreenMode prefs does a substring search in the Picasso96 primary board name to try and find which of the loaded monitor files is actually the primary board. If this substring search fails to produce a match after all loaded monitor icons have been processed, ScreenMode doesn't know which monitor tooltype to promote as the primary board, so it disables the option.

So, as a workaround, the BOARDNAME tooltype should contain the name of the P96 primary board to get that tab active again. (Note: Ranger will show you what the P96 boardname should be in the "Gfx Boards" tab).

I'll look to see what else can be done here, but it's difficult without OS support.

Simon

Well, quicker than expected, I have opted to use the first monitor loaded as the primary if none match. So technically, this is fixed for ScreenMode 53.24.

Thanks for the report.

Simon

ddni, glad you got it figured out. Simon, thanks for fast work.

mbrantley wrote:ddni, glad you got it figured out. Simon, thanks for fast work.

I was going to comment, but Simon figured it out before I could.

Trevor

Simon thanks for your insight.
I checked Ranger for the Gfx board name yesterday morning. It stated "Radeon HD 6800 Series" but this seemed to be too long and generic, so I ignored it...
This was a BIG error on my part.

My conclusion in post 3 is incorrect. I got the name wrong in BOARDNAME.

I guessed that the card was called "Radeon HD 6850". This seemed to work and AmigaOS ran nicely through the 6850, albeit with the monitors tab greyed out.
It turns out, that the actual card name is "Radeon HD 6800 Series". When I use that as BOARDNAME, all is well and the monitors tab is available.
My conclusion that names longer than 12 characters is a bug is wrong.
It is simply that the thirteenth character "5", in my guessed card name represents the first error compared to the real card name.

Given that I was using an incomplete and incorrect BOARDNAME, I am impressed that AmigaOS picked up the 6850 at all!

ddni wrote:My conclusion that names longer than 12 characters is a bug is wrong.
It is simply that the thirteenth character "5", in my guessed card name represents the first error compared to the real card name.

Given that I was using an incomplete and incorrect BOARDNAME, I am impressed that AmigaOS picked up the 6850 at all!

That's what the CMPLENGTH is for in the first place, it allows the use of a partial name as long as the length of what is equal is stated correctly.

Best regards,

Niels

My monitor driver for my 6850 is called simply "Radeon HD 6" because I followed the naming convention used in the multi-display tutorial from Trevor and Hans. Seems to work.

At one time I tried installing both my 6850 cards but that didn't work at all. It only seems to work when I install two different kinds of RadeonHD cards.