Can't get AMD 6850 drivers working.

[DealReal]

I've tried finding other threads but I'm assuming this is a fairly new problem as the drivers only came out 4 days ago.

I have an AMD 6850 and I noticed the new catalyst version which supports this series was out. So I decided to try and get LinuxMint 10 working. I can boot into it fine with the standard drivers but I can't use 3d graphics or change my monitors resolution.

After installing I was prompted to install the Proprietary graphics drivers as I expected. Went through with this and was prompted to reboot. After the LinuxMint splash screen both my monitors went black. I assumed this was just because of my HDTV so I turned it off (I've had problems like this before with my old nvidia card). My other monitor stayed blank so I rebooted and unplugged the HDTV. This time the screen had some random lines of orange and purple and I had the AMD unsupported hardware watermark.

I booted into failsafeX mode and uninstalled the drivers.
And went to the AMD website, chose Radeon HD series, 6xxx series, Linux 64, downloaded Catalyst 11.1 (released on the 26th of January) and installed it from there instead.
It boots successfully but I can't enable any 3d settings, change resolutions, etc. Trying to open the CCC results in a popup saying it couldn't find any supported hardware.

I'd love to get this working so if anyone has any ideas I'll be grateful.

[Roken]

I can't be sure that this will work for the 6850 - but here goes:

Backup any xorg.conf file you have and configure the ATI Drivers:

Code: Select all

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf $HOME/
aticonfig --initial

Then try a reboot. This may be enough to fix it.
However, if X fails at this stage boot to failsafe and restore xorg.conf

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sudo cp $HOME/xorg.conf /etc/X11/

That should at least get you back to a working system until someone comes up with another suggestion.

[DealReal]

james@james-mint ~ $ sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf $HOME/
james@james-mint ~ $ aticonfig --initial
aticonfig: No supported adapters detected

It won't let me do that first bit.

They are the drivers for my card, but they don't seem to be recognising my card.
Wanted to put that in before but I didn't know how to word it.

Thanks anyway

[GSXR750L]

you might be able to manually edit your xorg.conf mine has this entry in it after I installed nVidia drivers

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

[Z0mbie_68]

I am also having this problem exactly. I have gotten it to work .....sort of... on a couple of other distros but I got a watermark saying unsupported hardware. The resolution would be great but everything else would be garbage.

[Nowaysis]

I'm having the exact same problem, except I'm not sure I can install the drivers at all. I read elsewhere on the forum that the guide for Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat on the Unofficial AMD Linux wiki should work for LInux Mint 10 as well, so I decided to follow that (I'm a complete beginner at Linux, so guides are my friend at every turn). Everyting seems to work fine, until I get to generating the xorg.conf file with the command

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$ sudo aticonfig --initial -f

which returns "aticonfig: No supported adapters detected". I assume, running any commands beyond that point is a futile exercise?

I tried rebooting at this point, which made the Catalyst Control Center turn up among my applicaitons, but running it just gives an error message:
"There was a problem initializing Catalyst Control Center Linux edition. It could be caused by the following.

No ATI graphics driver is installed, or the ATI driver is not functioning properly."

And attempting to open the monitor manager gives the error:
"It appears that your graphics driver does not support the necessary extensions to use this tool. Do you want to use your graphics driver vendor's tool instead?"

Clicking yes, launches the CCC, with the above error, and clicking no launches the monitor manager, but still with o resolutions beyond 1280x1024 available.

Edit: Also, installing the drivers by running the installer's GUI gives the same result.

[RyuK]

Here's my experience. Hope it helps.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1676402 says that:

Cards in this group are unsupported as of Catalyst 10-12. The Catalyst driver may run on these cards, but it is not guaranteed (and you will be stuck with an "Unsupported Hardware" watermark unless you hack the control file). Full open source support is forthcoming in Linux kernel 2.6.38.
* CAICOS Radeon HD 6350
* TURKS Radeon HD 6670
* BARTS Radeon HD 6850/6870
* CAYMAN Radeon HD 6950/6970
Natty Narwal will ship with 2.6.38 in April

I managed to get it working, but I now have an unsupported hardware watermark. I couldn't get the deb file working so I did the following:

Uninstalled the default ATI driver.
Deleted everything in /etc/ati

sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-radeon
sudo sh ati-driver-installer-11-1-x86.x86_64.run

Went with all the automatics. Didn't generate a deb file.

Then I opened my xorg.conf in /etc/X11 and put the following:

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
DefaultDepth 24
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI radeon 6850"
Driver "fglrx"
EndSection

Rebooted and now all I get is the watermark. Catalyst does work to a certain extent.

[DealReal]

Thanks. That worked for me. I can boot into it, with the watermark. Still can't change the resolution of the TV because it won't let me sudo aticonfig. But it is progress nonetheless.