Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

ATI Rage 128(and derivatives) Linux support.

M

mzs.112000

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 22, 2015
269
128
Alright, this probably is not really big enough to merit a whole new thread, but here it is.

A Linux developer is working in better drivers for the ATI Rage 128 GPU, and it's derivatives. The driver should increase stability, and performance on modern Linux systems, possibly also add some features that weren't supported before.
So, how does this affect us, and PowerPC Mac's in general? Welp, lots of PowerPC Mac's support the Rage 128, and/or have and support GPU's based on the Rage 128 architecture, better Linux drivers will mean that Linux is now usable on a far wider range of PowerPC Macs. Will probably fix many problems experienced trying to install Linux on iBook's and such.

Here are the relavent articles:
https://bracecomputerlab.com/2018/06/08/assessing-the-state-of-r128-graphics-stack/

https://bracecomputerlab.com/2018/0...xt-graphics-device-driver-development-target/
 
  • Like
Reactions: Amethyst1, G4fanboy, LightBulbFun and 3 others
So the developers inside Apple believe that an AMD Radeon HD 6750M from seven years ago is ancient and not worth supporting at all. Meanwhile, on the Linux side there's a developer who believes that a 19-year-old ATI Rage 128 is in need of better support.

Amazing to think about...
 
  • Like
Reactions: im_to_hyper, Amethyst1, Slix and 5 others
Yes, but does the Rage 128 support Metal?? o_O

Seriously though, this is great. We’re constantly getting news of hardware support being dumped in favor of a new buzz word... So this is something positive for the early white iBook G3s, Pismo and first wave TiBooks.

And boo on Apple for deprecating OpenGL in Mojave. They didn’t even try to keep up with the advancements made by the Khronos group so they dropped another industry standard for their own proprietary preference.

Back on track though, I think it is the lack of Rage 128 support that stopped Adelie Linux from loading X11 on my little iceBook G3 500. :apple:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Amethyst1, flyinmac, Project Alice and 2 others
AphoticD said:
Yes, but does the Rage 128 support Metal?? o_O

Seriously though, this is great. We’re constantly getting news of hardware support being dumped in favor of a new buzz word... So this is something positive for the early white iBook G3s, Pismo and first wave TiBooks.

And boo on Apple for deprecating OpenGL in Mojave. They didn’t even try to keep up with the advancements made by the Khronos group so they dropped another industry standard for their own proprietary preference.

Back on track though, I think it is the lack of Rage 128 support that stopped Adelie Linux from loading X11 on my little iceBook G3 500. :apple:
Click to expand...

Yeah, thats why people like Linux, none of this proprietary garbage to worry about. Soon enough, there should be an up-to-date driver for a 20 year old GPU in Linux while in MacOS, a 6 year old GPU is obsolete and unusable.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Amethyst1, AphoticD and z970
mzs.112000 said:
Yeah, thats why people like Linux, none of this proprietary garbage to worry about. Soon enough, there should be an up-to-date driver for a 20 year old GPU in Linux while in MacOS, a 6 year old GPU is obsolete and unusable.
Click to expand...

Well, that's just one of the perks. ;)
 
It seems he is a PC guy, not a PowerPC lover... maybe someone can donate him a Rage 128 Apple machine to see if his interest are global or x86 only.
 
AphoticD said:
Yes, but does the Rage 128 support Metal??
Click to expand...

IIRC, it doesn't even support quartz extreme (accelerated image draw in OSX 10.2. Something about being able to use textures that weren't a power of two)OSX 10.2's Quartz Extreme. obsoleted my graphics card. So did OSX 10.4's CoreImage-- on a different machine.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: G4fanboy and AphoticD
jerwin said:
IIRC, it doesn't even support quartz extreme (accelerated image draw in OSX 10.2. Something about being ably to use textures that weren't a power of two)OSX 10.2's Quartz Extreme. obsoleted my graphics card. So did OSX 10.4's CoreImage-- on a different machine.
Click to expand...

I don’t think the Rage 128 was really designed to do much with OpenGL. It was a pretty awesome RAVE card at the time of release, but could not compete with the performance of 3dfx Glide acceleration on the Voodoo cards From the same era. ATI had an uphill battle but managed to stay in business with Apple during that period, even though their GPUs weren’t the number one performers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back