Trouble getting video cards to work

[Tony Dietrich]

On Tuesday 04 Jan 2005 05:37, Jonathan Berry wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 21:03:11 -0800 (PST), Lin Tse Hsu <evfreek at yahoo.com> 
wrote:
> > --- Markku Kolkka <markkukolkka at kolumbus.fi> wrote:
> > > Are you an antiques collector, or do you have any
> > > other sensible
> > > reason for wasting time and money on obsolete
> > > graphics hardware?
> >
> > The computer is an old Dell without an AGP slot.  I
> > had always heard that Linux tends to run better than
> > Windows on older hardware.  Also, the very new
> > hardware often has more bugs associated with it.
> >
> > Note that these cards are all listed on www.tldp.org
> > as supported, and they all are recognized and
> > configured.  It is just that some don't work, and
> > others are unstable to varying degrees.
> >
> > > Yes, get a video card that's currently manufactured.
> > > The X
> > > developers aren't likely to spend much effort on
> > > developing
> > > drivers for ancient cards.
> > >
> > > --
> >
> > There also seem to be a lot of bug reports for newer
> > cards, especially ATI or Nvidia (like the ATI Rage 128
> > problem).  Does this mean that if I try one of the
> > listed cards that are currently manufactured, as long
> > as I steer clear of the ones in the FAQ.
> >
> > And, I think that you meant "maintaining" rather than
> > "developing" drivers, since all the drivers for the
> > cards I have tried have already been developed.  They
> > appear in the hardware compatibility lists, and they
> > appear in the README's for xorg, but, they may be
> > "less" supported due to age.  This makes sense, but
> > buying 5 different modern cards and having them all
> > fail is an expensive proposition.  Perhaps I will try
> > just one.
> >
> > Are there any suggestions for a PCI video card which
> > is "more" rather than "less" supported?  All the ones
> > at the store seem to be AGP cards.
>
> I'd suggest a GeForce4 MX 440 or MX 4000.  I have a 440 and a 440 Go
> (laptop) and they both work great with the nVidia binary drivers.  You
> can find both AGP and PCI versions for not too much.  Check out
> www.newegg.com  Looks like you can get one there for about $50. You
> can also search for cards with PCI interface to see all of what is
> there.  I have only had experience with nVidia, but it looks like the
> ATI cards are about the same price.  A GeForce2 MX400 and a Radeon
> 7000 are a little less expensive, but not much.  The MX 400 should be
> fine, maybe someone who has had experience can tell you about the
> Radeon 7000.
>
> Jonathan

I can confirm that the MX4xx series work fine, in both AGP and PCI format.
-- 
Tony Dietrich
-------------
"This is lemma 1.1.  We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to 
one."
  -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351