ATI Mobility FireGL V5200

This is an ATI video adapter Features Chipset: ATI M56 - Similar to Radeon X1600 PCI ID: 1002:71c4 PCI Express x16 256 MB GDDR3-SDRAM video memory

Linux X.Org driver

NewsFlash: recent open source drivers support 3D fully. I'm running compiz fusion on my T60p with the Ubuntu 10.04 beta, and it's slick! I still wish for a low-power mode. --Dave abrahams 20:28, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Initial support included in the stable branch of the Xorg radeon driver (2D only). XVideo acceleration and 3D support have been added by the xorg driver developers and the driver is used by all majos distributions. The driver can be considered stable and fully supports Suspend-To-Disk and Suspend-To-RAM as well as XVideo acceleration in combination with composite extensions (compiz).

In addition to the radeon driver the card is also supported by the radeonhd driver. A Debian package already exists in the experimental branch. 3d is still under development and does not work satisfactorily on the T60p.

Recent releases of the ATI proprietary driver do not support this card anymore. Ever since ATI has been bought by AMD the specs for this card have been released to driver developers.

ThinkPad LCD

All current distributions offer full support for the 1600x1200 resolution of the screen.

External VGA port

Yes

SVideo port

No

DVI port

No (yes on Docking Station, working with fglrx driver

Proprietary ATI driver

The following information is outdated only relevant if you use an older distribution.

Proprietary fglrx driver works since version 8.25.18, version 8.24.8 works by adding "ChipID 0x71c5" to the xorg.conf "Device" statement and fooling it into thinking it's a X1600 mobility (do this only as a last resort or if you're sure you have an older driver; it is fatal to version 8.25.18).

The new driver 8.25.18 seems to support the card, see https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=1643 (successfully tested with the provided autorun installation script on OpenSuSE 10.1, T60p with 15" display).

(K)ubuntu 6.06 comes with this driver and it works out of the box. However, it seems to have problems with VT Switching (Alt+Fn). Instead of switching to a console, X resets and goes back to the log in screen (This doesn't happen when using the vesa driver). The switching issue might be resolvable by setting ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true in /etc/default/acpi-support, but it doesn't seem to help on all systems.

NOTE!

On Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) with 'splash' on the command line, you cannot switch to VTs. This is a Thinkpad T60. The screen remains graphical, but is very badly garbled. There is no text. X does not reset, and you can switch back to your X session. The solution is to include 'vga-791' or to remove 'splash' from the grub or lilo command line. You don't need to do both. (It's been a few days, so I don't remember where I found this...I just chanced upon this wiki page for the video card I'm trying to get working with xgl/AIGLX and Beryl).

Also, the pointer gets garbled sometimes in X, but this is only a minor annoyance. Dual Head (Xinerama) also works with this driver, but don't use KDE control center to enable it (use the ATi tool or edit xorg.conf manually)

I have a feeling that this card gets in the way when trying to suspend to RAM (resuming with a complete blank screen, lights are blinking, but that's it), but this can also be caused by other means.

Proprietary ATI driver on Ubuntu Feisty

I had a hard time getting resume from suspend-to-ram to work with Feisty on a Thinkpad T60p. When resuming, the screen just went black with X hanging.

It works like this:

1. In /etc/acpi/sleep.sh, as second line, add the line sudo chvt 1. This forces a switch to the text console before standby.
2. Likewise, in add to the very end of the file /etc/acpi/resume.sh the line sudo chvt 7.
3. Finally, the perhaps most important change goes into /etc/default/acpi-support. Change the line POST_VIDEO=true to read POST_VIDEO=. This was the point when it started working on my system.

NOTE: Step 3. above was the only change I needed to make. YMMV. --Brian E. Finley 23:26, 30 March 2007 (CEST)

NOTE: With only Step 3. above, my T60p would not even suspend when docked. Step 3. above was sufficient to make resume work for me when my laptop was not in its docking station. However, when I subsequently docked the machine I saw something I thought was banished with my upgrade to a 2.6.20 kernel: it uncermoniously powered off the instant it was docked, almost as though someone threw a hardware switch. --Dave Abrahams Thu Apr 12 11:18:22 EDT 2007

UPDATE: The problems mentioned above related to docking seem to happen when I use the gnome-power-manager applet menu but not when I use the suspend function in the window that results from clicking the "Log Out Button" applet. When I use the latter, suspend-to-RAM seems to work right, consistently. I'm following up with Ubuntu on this point. --Dave Abrahams Thu Apr 19 11:53 GMT 2007

NOTE: Editing /etc/acpi/sleep.sh and /etc/acpi/resume.sh is not necessary, as there is an option in /etc/default/acpi-support for that very feature: Just set the commented out DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true, and it will do the console switch suggested automatically. --Webograph 12:43, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

NOTE: I also had success doing nothing more than setting POST_VIDEO=false (step 3). Using a T60p (2007-83U) with fglrx 8.3 (8.47.3-3~bpo40 from Debian's etch-backports) --Steve Ihde 31 May 2008

For completeness, here are the complete settings of this file:

1. ACPI_SLEEP=true
2. ACPI_HIBERNATE=true
3. ACPI_SLEEP_MODE=mem
4. MODULES=""
5. MODULE_WHITELIST=""
6. SAVE_VBE_STATE=true
7. VBE_STATE=/var/lib/acpi_support/vbestate
8. POST_VIDEO=
9. USE_DPMS=true
10. # RADEON_LIGHT=true
11. # DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true
12. HIBERNATE_MODE=shutdown
13. LOCK_SCREEN=true
14. # DISABLE_DMA=true
15. # RESET_DRIVE=true
16. STOP_SERVICES="mysql "
17. RESTART_IRDA=false
18. ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true

Point 11 may eventually replace the chvt settings above, but I didn't try.

Ubuntu Hardy

Suspend/hibernate seems to work in Hardy with latest Catalyst driver out of box (no need to edit any conf files!). The only confusing thing is that it goes to sleep and hibernate pretty fast, but it takes a long time to resume from both, especially from hibernate. The first impression that it hangs, but it's not.

Linux kernel Framebuffer driver

Supported by the vesafb-tng project, but requires the boot parameter video=vesafb:nocrtc.

Alternatively, you may use classic vesafb with vga=838 for a 1400x1050 screen with 32 bit color depth.

NOTE!

The fglrx driver may cause distortion/corruption of the framebuffer after use at high resolutions, making the text difficult to read.

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) using RadeonHD driver

The RadeonHD driver is coming along and is very usable for 2D graphics, and now with the v1.2.3 release of the driver (not yet in the Intrepid repos), 3D support is there (XVideo extenstion works)! I have experienced no suspend/resume issues at all with this driver, so no caveats there.

The package you need to install is xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd. You probably have this installed already if you've installed Intrepid. However, as of this writing, the version included is 1.2.1 of the driver which doesn't have the 3D support in it. I have a build of v1.2.3 available (actually git commit 29cd7382, built by dropping the latest bits into the xserver-xorg-video-radeon source package and building) to use until Intrepid has updated packages.

[Update 30-Apr-09: Keeping pace with new development, I have a build of v1.2.5 available which seems to be more stable than 1.2.3 with recent xorg 1.5.2 updates, under which I've started having spurious hangs using xv apps and crashes on resume from suspend. v1.2.5 seems to fix these, so far...]

Just a few configuration nits.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf snippet:

Section "Device"
       Identifier  "LCD ATI Radeon Graphics Adapter"
       Driver      "radeonhd"
       Option      "AccelMethod"         "exa"
       Option      "DRI"                 "true"
       BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

You have to at least turn on DRI so the right plumbing gets hooked up for the 3D graphics. DRI in the driver is still off by default. And you can choose to not include the AccelMethod option, I've just found EXA to be faster than XAA (the default).

In previous versions of the driver you had to turn off both Composite and AIGLX. It appears you no longer need to do that, so if you have those in your Extensions or ServerFlags sections of xorg.conf, you can remove them.

There is a caveat, however, to get the kernel (2.6.27) to behave properly with a graphics console (i.e., what you get if you hit CTRL-ALT-F1). Similar to the above comment about using a framebuffer, you have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and change the defoptions line to something like:

# defoptions=video=vesafb vga=835

Then you type "update-grub" as root to update the kernel boot params with this new info. Mode 835 is 1400x1050 at 256 color depth. There are lots of other options, use "vga=ask" instead and reboot to find out what they are for your specific screen.

Note that you can't have "splash" on this line as the splash boot screen will mess up the console so that it becomes unusable, that is, a blank screen if you switch to any console. (Other suggestions for ways to deal with the boot console welcome.)

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) using RadeonHD driver

Version 1.2.4 of the radeonhd driver is included in the Jaunty release and should work fine.

ThinkPads this chip may be found in

• T60p
• Z61p