Resolution problems with an old ATI card

[celloandy]

I'm trying to bring an old Pentium 200MHz box back to life with Debian and XFCE. I've gone through the process of configuring X, both with dpkg-reconfigure and xorgconfigure (I think that's what it's called), and haven't been satisfied with the results thus far. I'd like 1024x768 resolution, and according to the respective websites, both the video card (an ATI Rage II+) and the monitor (Gateway ev500) support this resolution. X, however, won't let me have it. The modelines for all color depths include "1024x768", the the horizsync and vertrefresh properties are the ones that are supposed to be used with this monitor, so I'm really not sure. The X log reports that all of the 1024x768 modes aren't being used because the card has insufficient memory for the mode, but the log also reports that X only sees 2 megs of video ram, when lspci reports 16 megs. Also, I assume that since the card was advertised as supporting resolutions of up to 1600x1200, it has the necessary memory. Anybody have any ideas on how to force X to give me 1024x768?

Andrew

[jobezone]

I'm trying to bring an old Pentium 200MHz box back to life with Debian and XFCE. I've gone through the process of configuring X, both with dpkg-reconfigure and xorgconfigure (I think that's what it's called), and haven't been satisfied with the results thus far. I'd like 1024x768 resolution, and according to the respective websites, both the video card (an ATI Rage II+) and the monitor (Gateway ev500) support this resolution. X, however, won't let me have it. The modelines for all color depths include "1024x768", the the horizsync and vertrefresh properties are the ones that are supposed to be used with this monitor, so I'm really not sure. The X log reports that all of the 1024x768 modes aren't being used because the card has insufficient memory for the mode, but the log also reports that X only sees 2 megs of video ram, when lspci reports 16 megs. Also, I assume that since the card was advertised as supporting resolutions of up to 1600x1200, it has the necessary memory. Anybody have any ideas on how to force X to give me 1024x768?

Andrew

I don't know about your problem, but it may be a bug on the specific xfree86 driver for your video card. Search in google for the name of the driver you are using with xfree86, like, for example, "[video card driver] xfree86 debian" and see if anybody else has had problems like you are having. Also search in [/URL]http://bugs.debian.org[/URL] for bugs reported to the xserver-xfree86 package and relating to your driver, to learn if this happened with someone else. If none has been reported, you could report it yourself (you'll need to register).

Good luck!

[drdebian]

Have you tried using the VESA driver instead of the ATI-specific one? It usually gives good results with such old cards.

Another possibility would be to boot up your system with something like Knoppix to see which driver it thinks works best on your system.