[CALUG] ATI Radeon 2100-based graphics - driver or alternative video card?

[Bryan J Smith]

[ Ack, hit "send" before done ]

Short answer ...

Try one of these two boot options (edit your "append" line in GRUB):  
  "nomodeset"
or
  "radeon.modeset=0"

I believe I'm using the latter on my Gateway LT-3101u netbook, but I don't have
it in front of me to check.  I will also look at what "vga=" line I'm throwing 
at boot as
well, so you still get a solid VESA pixel count.  My 11.6" netbook has a 
1366x768
LCD IIRC, so I believe I boot with a 1024x768 VESA mode (that gets stretched).


-- Bryan

P.S.  I'm still using my nVidia cards from years ago, both open source (2D-only)
and closed source (full 3D -- legacy drivers are still updated by nVidia for 
newer
kernels, even my old circa early 2001 GeForce Go) drivers, so there's really no
such thing as "old."  The GPU support in Linux tends to be perpetual, because
there are always old cores being supported in newer IGP and related, OEM
products.  So no reason to upgrade.

Of course, AMD-ATI Radeon 4000 (and even some 5000) series cards are often
$10-25 after rebates, sometimes out-the-door with coupon.


----- Original Message ----
From: Bryan J. Smith <thebs413 at yahoo.com>

The AMD 740G is a 55nm die shrink from the 80nm 690G, and little changes on the
IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) side of things.  It's the same X1250-HD2100
design.

There is bad news, good news and then more bad news that can be mitigated.

The bad news is that AMD stopped supporting this driver in the proprietary 
driver.
There are always endless OEM changes with IGPs, and I'm sure AMD tired of it.
I've seen my share with the nForce/GeForce Go/M/etc... series on notebooks over
the years, although nVidia does its best to deal with vendor nuiances, and I 
would
argue they do a far, far better job than on Windows.  I.e., my Gateway P-7811FX
has issues with the generic nForce/GeForce 9M series Windows drivers, requires
the Gateway-specific ones, but the generic nVidia Linux drivers update just 
fine.

The good news is that the 690G/740G has full support in the open source world,
including 3D, and advanced feature-framebuffer support.  I have a refurbished
Gateway LT-3101u myself (bought almost a year ago for $200), the earlier
AMD 740G + 1.2GHz combination that kicks the newer Intel chipset + Core Solo
Gateway option in 3D performance and other things (power is about the same,
the 55nm 740G doesn't suck down much juice).  Distributions over the last few
years have the support, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc...  The newer distros even have more
advanced support for the IGP.

So the additional bad news, which can be mitigated, is that newer Kernel Mode 
Setting
(KMS) framebuffer doesn't handle these AMD-ATI IGPs well.  There are some 
firmware-
init issues before the Linux kernel starts that seems to set them up wrong.  The 

solution
is to disable KMS, which causes the init to fall back to VESA modes for just the 

boot
portion (nice logo screen for init).  Once X starts, its the fully accelerated 
driver.

One of these two boot time o ... cut ... (send accidentally hit)

----- Original Message ----
From: Ed Browne <edward_d_browne at yahoo.com>

I have unfortunately an AMD 740G MoBo with integrated ATI Radeon 
2100-based graphics.  It worked fine with Ubuntu 8.04, and pretty
well with 9.04, but not at all with 10.04.  According to all I've found 
on the web, I tried de-installing the drivers that came with the distro,
and using the proprietary one provided by AMD.  I think it was never
going to work, because it seems they've discontinued support for
any distro beyond February 2009 - and in fact the install fails with
a cryptic error about a version:

Error: ./default_policy.sh does not support version
default:v2:i686:lib::none:2.6.32-23-generic; make sure that the version 
is being correctly set by --iscurrentdistro

Anyway, just to check - is there in fact anyway to operate this
graphics chipset with Ubuntu 10.04?  If not, can anyone recommend
a cheap PCI-e video card that might be supportable for longer than
the <2yrs I got out of this one?

Thanks very much - Ed