hardware compatibility

[Paul Higgins]

Thanks Derick and Norberto for your help!

On Tuesday 03 October 2006 11:10, Derick Centeno wrote:
> You may be better off checking here and clicking upon Video Information:
>
> http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/hardware/breakdown/index.php?hw_c
> at_id=7

Unfortunately, that only gives the info for the original 16 MB card (ATI Rage 
128), whereas I'm looking to add a Radeon 9200 PCI card (128 MB).  The 
"supported devices" list gives some cursory info on the Radeon series of 
cards: 

<http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/hardware/devices.shtml>

The list mentions generic "ATI Radeon display support" under "support for 
frame buffer devices".  I guess maybe that's good enough, especially if the 
card works for Norberto on his machine.  Anyway, if I recall correctly--at at 
least on x86 Debian--there is just one generic Radeon driver for pretty much 
all of the ATI cards.  The driver must not take advantage of the features of 
the individual Radeon cards.  Then again, unlike NVidia, ATI has generally 
been extremely secretive about the internals of their cards, so that's hardly 
surprising.  Maybe the single driver situation is the same in YDL/Fedora.

> Note that the data on that page is for YDL 4.1.  From reading what you
> posted elsewhere I got the impression that you are trying to use a new
> card with a Blue and White and also use an older version of YDL?  I'm a
> bit confused, on what you are trying to do and why you are doing things
> that way.

Sorry to confuse you...I'm still running YDL 4.0.1 on my laptop (iBook), but 
I'll be installing 4.1 on the Blue & White.  I would change over the iBook to 
4.1 right now, but I'm a little nervous based on what I've read on the YDL 
site about various important apps like KMail not behaving properly when 
copying back directories from a backup CD/flash drive/whatever.  There are a 
fair number of machinations involved to make it come out right, and I want to 
make sure I have a working system (i.e. Blue & White) so that if I royally 
screw up the iBook, I'm not totally SOL for several days while I straighten 
it out.
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Tuesday 03 October 2006 15:16, Norberto Quintanar wrote:

Is this a video config file?  It looks familiar, but it's been a long time 
since I've had to mess with this stuff.

> Here's what works on my machine, with that card.  YMMV HTH
> <---starts here--->
> Section "Device"
> Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon 9200 (RV280)"
> Driver "ati"
> BusID "PCI:0:16:0"
> Option "UseFBDev" "true"
> EndSection
>
> Section "Screen"
> Identifier "Default Screen"
> Device "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon 9200 (RV280)"
> Monitor "SDM-M51"
> DefaultDepth 24
> SubSection "Display"
> Depth 1
> Modes "800x600" "640x480" "640x400"
> EndSubSection
> SubSection "Display"
> Depth 4
> Modes "800x600" "640x480" "640x400"
> EndSubSection
> SubSection "Display"
> Depth 8
> Modes "800x600" "640x480" "640x400"
> EndSubSection
> SubSection "Display"
> Depth 15
> Modes "800x600" "640x480" "640x400"
> EndSubSection
> SubSection "Display"
> Depth 16
> Modes "800x600" "640x480" "640x400"
> EndSubSection
> SubSection "Display"
> Depth 24
> Modes "800x600" "640x480" "640x400"
> EndSubSection
> EndSection
> <---ends here--->

With the 800x600 resolution, you must be using a fairly small screen, like a 
15" LCD or something?  The card of course is capable of much higher 
resolutions, especially with 128 MB on tap.  Have you tried setting higher 
resolutions?  Anyway, it's good to know that the card works.  I'll be picking 
one up.

-PRH