ATI, Gatos, 3D OpenGL

Here is recipe for owners of ATI cards (specially All in Wonder) to prepare your Mepis system for TV watching and capture.
3D openGL acceleration works too so you can play tuxracer while not watching TV.
This is compilation of my own experiences and various howtos found on the Web.

ALSA part
----------

apt-get install alsa-base (alsa-utils will be installed too)
During configuration choose your sound card (VIA82XX in my case).
Go to /lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/sound/.
Find and rename your old sound card driver (via82cxxx_audio.o to old-via82cxxx_audio.o-old in my case)
In Preferences/Sound & Multimedia/Sound System Sound I/O Method tab choose Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA).
Reboot and look at boot time messages if ALSA was loaded properly.
If you'll get strange KDE error messages, go to Preferences/Sound & Multimedia/Sound System Sound I/O Method and play with the settings (specially Audio Buffer size).
If sound quality is ok for you, the ALSA part is done. If not go to www.alsa-project.org, find your card, download latest drivers and libs (utils do not compile and they are not mandatory so don't waste your time downloading them). The installation procedure is fairly simply and described in details on www.alsa-project.org.
In short it goes like this:

Unpack drivers and:
cd alsa-driver-xxx
./configure --with-cards=via82xx --with-sequencer=yes;make;make install

Unpack lib and:
cd alsa-lib-xxx
./configure;make;make install

update-modules

3D acceleration with Gatos ATI.2 drivers
----------------------------------------

According to 'Howto: 3D OpenGL with XFree86 radeon driver'
(...) the Mepis install comes with Nvidia drivers installed,
they must be removed, or else they get loaded and wrecks havoc.

'rm /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so*'

In /usr/lib there's some nvidia drivers as well, and some symbolic links that point to nvidia glx libs.
We need to clean that up.

'cd /usr/lib'
'rm libGL*'
'ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.a libGL.a'
'ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 libGL.so.1'
'ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 libGL.so.1'
'ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 libGL.so'
'ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLU.a libGLU.a'
'ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLU.so.1.3 libGLU.so.1.3'
'ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLU.so.1.3 libGLU.so.1'
'ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLU.so.1.3 libGLU.so'
(...)

To replace deleted libraries I've reinstalled XFree binaries.
Download Xinstall.sh from ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.3.0/
Open konsole in the directory where Xinstall.sh was saved and execute 'sh Xinstall.sh -check'
The output of 'Xinstall.sh' script tells you which is the correct set of binaries for you to download.
('Linux-ix86-glibc23' in my case).

(...)
Once you're run the Xinstall.sh script and found which binary distribution is
suitable for your system, download the necessary files (into the same directory). The twelve (12)
mandatory files for all installations are listed below. If you have not
downloaded all of the files, the installer script will complain.

1. Xinstall.sh The installer script
2. extract The utility for extracting tarballs
3. Xbin.tgz X clients/utilities and run-time libraries
4. Xlib.tgz Some data files required at run-time
5. Xman.tgz Manual pages
6. Xdoc.tgz XFree86 documentation
7. Xfnts.tgz Base set of fonts
8. Xfenc.tgz Base set of font encoding data
9. Xetc.tgz Run-time configuration files
10. Xvar.tgz Run-time data
11. Xxserv.tgz XFree86 X server
12. Xmod.tgz XFree86 X server modules

additionally I've downloaded following files:

13. Xprog.tgz X header files, config files and compile-time libs
14. Xvfb.tgz Virtual framebuffer X server

(...)
It is recommended to colse X session before installing these files.
You must login as the super user (root) to run the installer script. Run the installer script as follows:

sh Xinstall.sh

Answer the prompts as they come up. In my case all answers were default except question about installing links to OpenGL libraries (YES of course).
Reboot.
Download ATI.2 drivers and drm-kernel source from gatos.sf.net.
Unpack drivers file (ATI-4.3.0-13.i386.tar.gz) into /usr/ directory. This will replace some XFree86 files.
Unpack (drm-kernel-1.100.0-13.tar.gz) and compile (make -f Makefile.linux) drm-kernel file.
Copy radeon.o to /lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/char/drm/
Open /etc/modules and add following line:

agpgart
Reboot.
Execute 'glxinfo' and check if direct rendering is working.
Without DRM 'glxgears' showed c.a. 300 FPS, after installing DRM I've got c.a. 1400 FPS.

Watching and capturing TV
-------------------------

In fact at this point you should be able to watch TV using XAWTV.
But to use Gatos AVVIEW we need some additional steps.

Download km-0.5.0.tgz source from gatos.sf.net.
Unpack and compile kernel module file.
make
make test
make install
Open /etc/modules and add following line:

km_drv

First we need to install some additional libraries.
apt-get install tcl8.4-dev
apt-get install tk8.4-dev

Now install avview.
Download avview-0.12.0-0.1mdk.i586.rpm from Gatos site.
Convert rpm into deb by:
alien -d avview-0.12.0-0.1mdk.i586.rpm
Install avview_0.12.0-1.1_i386.deb

Execute start_avview to check if avview is working.
If not try: apt-get install avview and then again install avview_0.12.0-1.1_i386.deb.

Now you can play tuxkart, watch and capture TV.
For TV capture compress sound with MPEG2, other compressors seems to be not working.
That's all. The above procedure worked for me.
My configuration: Althlon XP 1800, 256 MB, ATI AiW Radeon 7500, Soltek 75DRV2

Good luck
Andrzej Wasik