gerryf

Just curious...does anyone know why Catalyst drivers don't always support the mobility series of radeons?

MIG-31

personally i don't.

just putting in this link. have you tried mobility modder

__________________

Crash Override

quite honestly?

laptop manufacturers wont allow it

they must approve any and all drivers that are made for their laptops.

personally it makes me quite angry that I have to use modded drivers without the features that my laptop should be able to use because the manufacturers wont allow it


what i wouldnt give to be able to use the power saving features to boost my battery life a bit for while im travelling by bus

Im just a poor college student trying to get a business going and when I have to take trips I hate it when it dies only 4 hours into the ride.

The_Neon_Cowboy

Well get me a copy of you makers latest and i can monkey around with it see if i can get you a nice medium.no promises but I could allways try!

allthough you'd be the genie pig....

but, you cold allways try... tis better to try and fail then to have never have tried...

__________________

Crash Override

the crapy thing is even with the latest release from gateway i still dont have powerplay enabled *sighs*

i dont know if they just didnt allow it to be added in or what. I thought all of the mobile 9000s were supposed to be able to use it

but ill kick over the latest gateway set to ya

do you have my msn or would you want me to send it another way?

edit-

Im an idiot lol

I can just upload them to my site and give you the linkie lol


should take me another 10 mins to get the drivers up to my site (im currently at my house stuck with only 128kb a second upload *sighs*)

however once they are to the site you should be able to pull them down as fast as your pipe can handle

they are also newer than the last posted driver for my laptop but according to the release notes and the inf it does support my laptop so not sure why in the heck they didnt put these up for my laptop as well rather me having to go dig for it on the M505 moder rather than the 600S

ah well.....im also gonna test them out and see if they have the powerplay enabled by default. if not then ill test out whatever mods you can make to them once I back up the data off the laptop

Zardon

interview with Chris Hook

Zardon: As you know alot of people understandably complain about lack of driver support for mobility, can you to explain to our members exactly why ATI cant release new drivers to support all mobility chips?

Chris: Because every notebook uses different hot keys, etc., each needs a customized driver, which then must be qualified by the OEM. We provide new drivers every few weeks to our OEMs, but it’s up to them to decide how often they want to qualify and post driver updates. This is an industry-wide phenomena, that applies to all graphics vendors and all OEMs, as well as ODMs and resellers. The best thing you can do is to check with the vendor how often they update notebook drivers before purchasing a notebook.

The_Neon_Cowboy

yea but the thing is they may update them a whole lot at first but a little bit later and they seem not to give a crap anymore buy what I’ve seen a read. Same thing goes for board’s bios etc... Soon as they have a new model they begin to neglect the support and updates to the slightly older product.

Either way I think that they should make generic solution from Ati that works with most setups. The same way you can use the video drivers from you “powered by” card marker or the reference driver’s meant for the “built by”. It really needs to be done


Backups are defiantly most always a good idea. Especially when messing with drivers. What I would/will plan to do is see if and what files in you factory install can be updated. Like I said I can’t guarantee anything. I wanted to dig into laptop drivers before but no one ever got me a link to their drivers. It all depends a lot of if and maybes. But with a bit of luck I might be able to come up with something good for you.

__________________

Crash Override

btw I have them up at my site now

link to them should be

http://www.hotwiredpc.com/9524026.rar

Zardon

Pm might have worked better for that CO. hopefully you got enough bandwidth if a few hundred people fancy a download

Crash Override

i should be able to handle up to about 500 downloads of that particular package for the rest of this month

besides

once neon grabs it im pulling it back down again

update - btw I just found out that the newer drivers dont have a control panel that gets installed with them so Im downloading the default one from the cat 3.8 which seems to be the driver these are built off of


update - and oopsy

for some reason gateways site didnt give me the proper set last time

I however have that problem fixed

this time the download size checks out properly and I will be checking a few more things out before I go uploading again lol

update - i had to manually add in support for the mobility 9000 to this set of drivers.

also this set of drivers has the odd issue that seems to be happening with modded mobile drivers lately.

that issue being if its not one of the cards originally in the list for support the drivers simply wont install.

getting ready to test now though and see how the homebrew set works

if its good enough I will release em


update yet again lol - so far so good with the set other than still no powerplay support

Im beginning to wonder if gateway didnt turn it off in the bios for the actual chip

me thinks me may need to find out if any manufacturers use the same mobile 9000 setup that im using and have powerplay enabled

if so i may bite the bullet and try swapping the bios out

if Terry knows this will not work have him shoot me for thinking of it but I think we laptop users really should get powerplay enabled *sighs*

patje

Hey crash,

don't be so mad about this, the day ati includes mobility support is the day i lose my job hehe.
anyway, the powerplay issue is really strange but i'm looking into it atm to see if I can't enable it for all cards that support powerplay.

You'll be the first to know when its done

Patje

__________________

Crash Override

Thanks Patje

If you want me to I can see if I can dump a bios file off of my laptop and see if it will give you any hints

edit -

very very interesting

it seems that no matter what I try the bios file it not save correctly onto floppy

I wonder if they have some sort of copy lock on it *sighs*

The_Neon_Cowboy

I've got it man go edit your post, sorry i needed some sleep

EDIT
let me know by post op via pm asap what os your useing so I can save myself time

EDIT
also might save me some time in the inf's to know which chipset your useing M?

EDIT
I'm pretty sure i may have just found the key that contols the powersave otions get back to me man!!!!

__________________

patje

hey neon,

You might also send that info to me if you wish, this way I can improve the mobility modder even more.

thanks in advance!

__________________

The_Neon_Cowboy

well I'm not 100% sure yet. I'll wait untill its been tested.

Wish I had someones driver were we know for a fact that has that option enabled for sure.
that why I can be sure the keys are right. I'd need a set of 3.4 cats ment for a laptop that has
those options shown to be sure. I'm gonna tinker for a bit till he gets on.

anyone have a mobilty labtop with cat 3.4 drivers (ATI CATALYST 3.4, 05/14/03,)

I have only the regular ati's/the mobilty set he posted/and a set moded with your tool to compair
and I think I see whats doing it.

__________________

Crash Override

XP, M9

Ive tried modifying all of the enable options for it and I still couldnt get it to work

but once I have that inf youve modded I can try integrating it with an even newer set I found :|

btw the thing is I dont believe its a driver thing anymore

Looking at it carefully I think the vendors have the option of disabling it in the bios.

I really wish they wouldnt though as I found out it can dramatically increase battery life.

The_Neon_Cowboy

newer set?


also can you get a copy of you bios out? I can edit the options/defults but there more risk involved. I can even give you programs to edit your self it's quite easy.

__________________

patje

Well, I'm also starting to suspect that it's bios related, if I install the catalyst driver modded with my tool on my M9 i have the powerplay option available, so you should aswell get also, unless it's bios related

__________________

The_Neon_Cowboy

i dunno patje

some seem to have the option disable some enabled....

i'm takeing the vale of one the looks enabled to al the rest and i'll have a link up soon if this gives him that feature we will have found something...

mabe not all boards chipsets suport the feature?

__________________

patje

Well, i'm pretty sure that every M9 chip had powerplay support, you can find that info on the Ati website.

here

still strange tough

__________________

The_Neon_Cowboy

but some chipsets had it disabled..... don' as me which cuz i'm done now lol

here are the moded inf's to try.... sending via pm

C2_13118.inf
CX_13118.inf

you should make a set of patje's moded 4.1's but use these inf's after....
wish i had somethingto try these on but it look s like your the genie pig crash,
squeal crash! squeal! lol

I enabled powerplay and set it to on as defult on all chips. I also set each to use the old powerplay interface. I also enabled powerplay on suspend. I left the defaults on reduce bit depth was afraid to enable it incase some chips dont support it but can easly go back later if you want to try that 2 that is if this acually works for you.

If not it's probubly in the bios and we'll have to attack that another way.

__________________

Crash Override

getting ready to test it in just a minute

the only real problem im having is that the bios from the mobile chip will not extract at all or if it does it comes out as all 0s.

Ive tried every method I can think of and it just wont go. Radedit refuses to open em and when I do open in a hex editor like I said above all 0s

Patje with your M9 is it one of the ones with the 64MB of on-chip memory with a core that looks like a + sign?

im also chatting with gateway about it right now.

edited bits - added the last line and a couple other details and corrected some spelling

patje

it has 32MB of on-chip and have no idea what the core looks like, it's a laptop from work, i prefer to keep it in 1 piece

__________________

Crash Override

ah ok

btw gateway seems absolutely convinced that its because I do not have the stock control panel installed off of the original driver cd

which I now have to find (havent even really touched that cd since I got the laptop, first thing I did was reinstall windows and use all newer drivers for everything)


well what a surprise

I gave that a try and no go


and now gateway is telling me that powerplay isnt supported on the mobility 9000s by ati

i think i smell bullshit

The_Neon_Cowboy

(you should be useing the latest ati contol panel) have you tryed installing the drivers with the inf's I gave you yet?

__________________

Crash Override

yup

for some reason it still didnt enable it

ive got a service request in with gateway for them to come get the laptop and repair it since its still under warranty

ive been meaning to have them fix it since speedstep doesnt work properly on this thing either

WTH

now they are telling me they no longer provide shipping for repairs under warranty

The_Neon_Cowboy

no longer provide shipping WTF!

Yea it might be bios or firmware disabled or something verry odd.... (unless were missing something)

__________________

Crash Override

well according to them they want me to ship it in and I finally got them to give me a credit to the gateway store for the amount its going to cost me to ship this laptop in...so that means I can finally convince liz to get that webcam

Basically what they told me is that if they cannot repair the laptop to a state where powerplay is working and speedstep starts working properly (another weird issue that ive had) that they will offer me a replacement laptop of equal price.

Well the laptop they have now of equal price is the M505XL with the 1.5GHz Pentium-M with the 9600 onboard

Im hoping in a way they dont fix it properly