[ale] Trying to use ATI Radeon On-Board Video

[James Sumners]

Make sure you have the ATi drivers installed that you would like to
use. The open source ATi drivers are quite good since ATi released
open documentation for their cards. The open source drivers even have
3D acceleration support, and Kernel Mode Setting (in the newest
drivers). The proprietary driver has faster 3D acceleration, but is
still garbage IMHO. If you switch between X and VTs frequently, then
the driver _will_ crash your system so hard that you have to reboot.

In any event, take a look at [1] and [2]. You might start by `mv
/etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup` and then `Xorg
-configure`. Then you can do tweaks by hand based on the information
in those two links.

[1] -- http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI
[2] -- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 7:28 PM, Marc Ferguson <marcferguson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Folks,
> How can I configure my x server via the terminal? Here's some background.
> My PCI Express card (nVidia GeForce 8600 GT) died last week so I've resorted
> to using the on-board video port. My motherboard is a Biostar TA690G AM2 5.x
> and their site says that it's an ATI Radeon 1200 series port. Ironically; I
> can load into my Windows partitions (Windows Vista: Home Premium) fine...
> and I can even play video games (Battlefield 2, Star Wars Galaxies, etc). My
> main concern, though, is the Linux partition. I can't seem to setup the
> right xorg.conf configuration. To be honest, I'm not that great in
> configuring x via the terminal. I've tried "Xorg -configure" as suggested by
> the Xorg site, but that doesn't work. I tried replacing the old "nv" entry
> with "ati", but that didn't work.
> The result is the monitor is very pixelated and I can't navigate or really
> see where I am. I can see my mouse, but it's pretty much useless. Once I
> "startx" the x server, I can't Alt+Ctrl+Backspace back into the terminal. I
> have to do a reboot into runlevel 3 and try again. Thanks for any help.
> http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/t-series/introduction.php?S_ID=17
>
> --
> Marc Ferguson


-- 
James Sumners
http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
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