SiS 671/672 Graphics: OpenGL/3D driver

related to:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=615094


I haven't heard of a single Linux user who would have installed the 3D drivers for the SiS 6717&72 Mirage 3 graphics chip.

Mr. Barros Lee of SiS in Taiwan wrote the 3D driver and internally released it, however, SiS refuses to publish the driver to end-users (that's us) but allegedly only gives it to mainboard manufacturers. I asked the manufacturer of my wife's laptop (Haier, a big Chinese consumer electronics comapny), but they didn't know of a driver for Linux. Mr. Lee is not allowed to release the driver himself; only a 2D driver can be sent to end-users which - in my case - performs pretty badly.

As there is no way of getting the driver at the moment and most probalby neither in the near future, I thought we should try to build it ourselves.

I've got no experience whatsoever in programming drivers, but I have been working as a software developer for a while now and am experienced in microcontroller programming. I don't know what is required to write a driver for the chip, but I would like to volunteer for working in a team of people who know more.

Is there anybody willing to participate? If you've got any information that could be helpful in the process please post it. If you've got a machine with this chip you could volunteer as a tester.

I don't know if anything usable will come out of this idea, but I really hope we will be able to solve this problem.

Rekado

Doing such a project requires _A_ _LOT_ of knowledge, though only a very minor minority suffers from the lack of a sis graphics driver.
I would suggest to:
A) start a petition
B) ask canonial to ask the guy who wrote the driver
BEFORE trying to rebuild it yourself, which will take plenty of tie and resources.. with variang success, not being guuarantied at all..

I once read that it's a myth that only rocket scientists can develop graphic drivers... but I sure agree with what you've said: it is a lot of work requiring a lot of knowledge.
From what I've learnt SiS would want a significant amount of money to be paid for the driver - would Canonical be likely to get this driver when it seems that not even the mainboard manufacturers (who should be able to get it) got it?
Should I just write an email to Canonical? I wish I could know how many Linux users actually would benefit from the driver.

I am not sure about what to do, but you might file a bugreport explaining what would be required to do... can't of anything else at the moment..

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Originally Posted by rekado

I wish I could know how many Linux users actually would benefit from the driver.

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Hi, I would be more than happy if this "mystery" 3D driver of Barros Lee's came out of the darkness and available for the public use.
And as far as I have checked this forum, there is quite a lot of people who would benefit from the driver.

Asking Canonical seems to be a bit difficult (I know, if that is considered difficult how should we start writing a driver on our own...) - there is no contact address that would seem appropriate for our request.

A bugreport would not help much, this is not even a feature request. Actually we would just like to have someone pay for getting the driver and including it in following Ubuntu versions.

Barros Lee said that he is not allowed to release any hardware specifications of the chip, so writing a driver could be even more difficult than it is already...

You may try the first address you can find for canoncial, you may get further info where to go...

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Originally Posted by soxs

You may try the first address you can find for canoncial, you may get further info where to go...

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I agree with rekado, reading the following @ canonicals contact page.

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Please try and find the right channel for your enquiry. We do try and respond to all requests but due to volume we can only reply to requests received in the correct relevant channels. All requests should be in English if possible.

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And the only available email address is to webmaster :(

I indeed sent an email address to the webmaster - not with the actual request but with the request for the appropriate contact data. Isn't that (remotely) connected to the webpage if we can't find the proper communication channel...?
Hope to receive a reply.

On the other side I'm still working on getting the driver through manufacturers. I just wrote to Barros Lee again, telling him about the disappointing reply I received from the service guys at Clevo Germany (the Taiwanese service didn't reply, probably because they cannot read simplified characters that well...). He told me before that he is almost sure that Clevo has the driver. Here an excerpt of his mail:

我有收到Clevo 寄給我的信，我已經將他轉寄給我老闆跟相關的人，據說他們已經有請台北的Clevo 跟他們接觸。

"I again {maybe a typo in the original text} received a mail sent by Clevo; I already forwarded it to my boss {not sure about that passage} and he said that he already asked Clevo Taipei (Taiwan HQ) to get in touch with them."


我也覺得很複雜，明明是很簡單的事情，為什麼搞那麼複雜一層又一層。我不介意幫忙sis 寄driver 給end user，可是sis 就不讓我做…

"I also feel it's somehow very complicated; actually it is such a simple thing, so why do they have to make it so complex with one layer and yet another layer... I wouldn't mind to help SiS to send out the driver to end-users but SiS just won't let me do it..."


This could mean that with some luck the driver is somewhere available through Clevo support if they manage to share their knowledge. I will send an email to Clevo Taipei once again, this time with traditional characters (can't even read them), and hope I can get a reply clearing things up a bit.

Please don't set your hopes high on this (but I sure do)...

You're right, it is a website matter that there isn't any email for miscellaneous questions.

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Please don't set your hopes high on this (but I sure do)...

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Can't help myself... I do to :)

Good work so far, Rekado