[CLUE-Tech] ATI card driver question

[Mike Staver]

I believe I had that same ATI card in an intel box about 5 years ago... 
I also remember having a very hard time getting it to work under linux, 
even though it was supposed to be supported.  I tried many different 
Xconfigs - and I ended up giving up and going with an nividia basted 
TNT2, which seemed to work ok.  Probably not what you wanted to hear I'm 
guessing, and maybe the machine isn't worth upgrading, but if you could 
find a cheapo graphics card like a TNT/TNT2/Geforce2 MX, I think the 
nvidia drivers should be pretty solid.  Although, I don't honestly know 
how those types of cards would function in an Apple, but I believe Apple 
sells systems with both nividia and ati products in them, so with a 
little research, I'm sure you could find a cheap one on ebay that would 
work if you're looking to play games in Yellow Dog.

Francis X. Maier wrote:

> I'm running Yellow Dog 3.0 (basically, Red Hat for Macs) on an original 
> 333 iMac with an ATI Rage 128 card (AGP slot, I think).
> 
> When I do "glxgears," I get between 80 and 100 FPS on the 3D spinning 
> wheels image. That's good, right?
> 
> But when I run "glxinfo | grep rendering," I get this message:
> 
> [root at dannyp root]# glxinfo | grep rendering
> Xlib:  extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
> direct rendering: No
> 
> I've gone into /etc/X11/XF86Config and uncommented "load DRI," per info 
> I've found on the web. It apparently has no effect.
> 
> I've also tried substituting the "r128" driver for the "fbdev" driver in 
> the XF86Config file, but then my xserver won't start and I'm stuck in 
> text display. The card only seems happy with "fbdev" as the driver. (I 
> haven't tried the "ati" driver -- couldn't find any references to that 
> driver working with this card on the web).
> 
> Anyone have any suggestions for getting 3D hardware acceleration to work 
> in this situation? I've gone to the ATI site, but their Linux drivers 
> all seem to be for the higher end Radeon cards.
> 
> Thanks in advance!

-- 

                                 -Mike Staver
                                  staver at fimble.com
                                  mstaver at globaltaxnetwork.com