[Eug-lug] Am I missing the big picture?

[mage at chromebob.com]

George,

I don't believe that any topic is sacred cows here (why do I want a burger now?).

I believe that the biggest issue here is that the Ubuntu distribution does not properly support older video cards.  Since the card does work with the ATI driver included with Ubuntu, I would say that it is the Ubuntu configuration program that is causing this issue.

> Is it an issue with old hardware not being supported?

Most likely the configuration program is seeing that this card uses the ati driver and therefore is picking a pre-set group of settings, which are not compatible with this card, but probably work with another card.

> I should maybe throw in another card?

Yeah, the configuration program may not have problems with different card.

> Is it too basic an issue?

Really, the only TOO BASIC of an issue would be "how do I find the power button?"  Even that isn't too basic some times, given some of the machines out there.

> Missing ATI drivers issue seems to be a common one
> with Ubuntu6.10, however nobody on this board is
> responding.

As I mention above, this is not a missing driver, but a configuration program that doesn't do the job right for these cards.  The problem becomes that the developers for this program usually don't have a smattering of cards laying around to test on, so they write their code to some kinda specification, which comes from goodness knows where.  Then, they hope that spec is right and let other people try it out and find the problems.  Given that the IIC was released way back in 1998, it is starting to become rare out there "in the wild" so it is harder to get adequate feedback on the issue in time.

Others have mentioned using other distros, and that can work because not all of the distros use the same configuration program.  This is one of those times that each distro remaking their own wheels keeps them from copying everyone else's mistakes.

Thanks,

Chris