[Themer]

This is somewhat a continuation of an old post I had that died, but I enough new questions that I think it needs a new topic. More specifically, the card in question is a ATI Rage 128 Pro Ultra TF using the "ATI" driver. I am rather sure it is PCI, but I could be wrong. The system is currently running Feisty (7.04) fine, with the exception of doing anyhting. More specifically, moving a window, scroling a page, etc etc is very slow. Obviously video acceleration is not enabled as it should be, and the desktop effects (compiz - the old one) "cannot be enabled". Does anyone know of a way to make this card work at all in Ubuntu? Specifically Hardy Heron, as I am planning to upgrade the person for obvious reasons, but any ideas?

[coopstah13]

in order to use desktop effects you would need to have proper hardware acceleration, i doubt that the ati driver that comes with xorg will provide that, you would have to install a driver from ati site, upon inspection, your card appears to be a legacy product and has no linux driver

[Themer]

Yes that is correct - It is apparently using a "ATI" driver, but there is no real acceleration. The site also does not provide one as this card is rather old (5+ years)*.

I am wondering if there is perhaps an open-source driver? The computer's not mine, and it will never have to play games or anything like that - just somehting that will be enough to make everyhting work properly - ex. not having moving a window be an intensive task

*Although, I do haev a card from Diamond that was popular around the time a 200Mhz Pentium with 128Mb of memory was top-of the line :P

[coopstah13]

afaik the ati driver provided by xorg is the open source one

[Themer]

interesting... its just that with the more modern cards, the nvidia 7600 specifically, that I seem to remember it having no driver installed by default, and there being a choise between the open open-source driver, or the fast proprietary driver.

So there is really no way to make this card work? There's no secret webpage with an archive of old drivers or something?

[coopstah13]

nope, you have to use the "ati" driver provided by xorg, ati only recently started making proprietary linux drivers, so its no wonder that the very old cards are not supported

[Themer]

That's too bad... you would just think that the open source one would be at least useful - from what I've seen, it is no better than having no acceleration

Also, if you want to claim that the ati driver really is no acceleration, then I have no plroblem with that but explain how the opensource nvidia 7600 driver was slow, but still very much accelerating to my system?

[coopstah13]

open source nvidia driver doesn't supply any hardware acceleration, you have to install the proprietary driver for that, the system with the 7600 was probably just a much faster system

[nonspecifico]

The correct driver is "r128" not "ATI".

The X11 system detects this incorrectly.

I noticed that Windows also detected some of these cards incorrectly as well. This leadi to crashes and errors in windows if you didn't manually specify the correct driver for your card, or download the "detonator" driver pack from ATI (which detects the correct card and installs it in windows automatically).

You have to manually edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. (you need root/su privileges)

Change the "Device" Section as follows: (This is mine, change yours to suit. My comments are in { } )

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Boardname "ATI Rage 128" {Change this to your card name}
Busid "PCI:1:5:0" {This was detected before. Don't change yours}
Driver "r128"
Screen 0
Vendorname "ATI"
Option "MergedFB" "off"
EndSection

Anyway, Google earth and some 3D screen savers still make my machine hang, and the 3D is really choppy when it does work. I know this is an old card, but I got better performance out of it on window 2000 and XP, so there must still be configuration issues.

[Themer]

Ah, yes, I think your finally on to something here! I will be visiting the machine within the next month and will attempt to make the recommended modifictaions then, along with anything else that can be brought to my attention between now and August. I can also remote in, but prefer not to for important htings such as this, as if something goes teribly wrong I like to be there to fix it (if a reinstall, etc. is required).