Plymouth on ATI X1400 hardware and text plugin

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 16:56:11 +0530,
  Steve Repo <scmuser at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Thanks for a wonderful release! I have a Dell E1505 with onboard ATI
> X1400 card with 128MB memory.
> 
> I tried the Fedora 10 x86_64 Live from a USB thumbdrive.  I was hoping
> to see the plymouth graphical boot but was greeted with a text plugin
> (3 progress bars on the borttom of the screen). Everything else works
> well.
> 
> I thought modesetting was available on R500 (X1400) ATI hardware. Is
> there anything special that I have to do to get this activated?

It is available. And you might even be using it. There are several available
plugins for plymouth. I have my system set so I get to see all of the
messages during boot. The main thing I notice is change in the resolution
when KMS kicks in. That may not be obvious in your case.
You might try installing some of the plymouth plugins and see if that
changes what happens during the boot. There may be some kernel options
that affect things as well.