ATI X1650 Kubundu

[mbc0]

LinuxMCE Vs Windows MCE - The Video - It was massively Bias towards Linux MCE & The video made everything in Linux look soooo easy!! How wrong I was!!

I have always had the temptation to try Linux & in fact did about 2 years ago, but everything seemed so "over complicated" as it was so much easier to do the things I wanted to do in Windows... After seeing the Video on LinuxMCE I knew I had to have a go as it looks simply amazing! everything that I want in a media center.

I have built a Home Theatre PC specifically for this purpose, All I want is Linux MCE to be running in my box in the TV Cabinet...

I have downloaded Kubuntu 7.04 & Linux MCE 1.1 Beta. I cannot get as far as to install Linux MCE as I am unable to get my ATI X1650 card to output from the S-Video connector. I have an S-Video to Composite adapter, which I have been using to display Windows MCE on My HD TV. But now when I turn my PC on it will display all the lines of text from my Bios & even as far as the Loading GRUB but then blank! I have had to connect a monitor to my card to see what was going on. basically as soon as the Kubuntu logo comes up on the screen my card stops/is unable to display out through the S-Video connector, but on the monitor everything seems fine. In Kubuntu I can enter the Monitor Options & Select the 2nd display, but the apply button is greyed out! (yes I have clicked the administrator button) I have downloaded the latest driver from ATI, but after installation instead of getting what I expected I get a black screen with a flashing curser in the top left... thats it! I then have to re-install EVERYTHING again just to get the same result.

Can anyone PLEASE help me before I regrettably have to go back to Windows....

Many Many Thanks for reading this

[javierrivera]

Re: ATI X1650 Kubundu

You will probably need to install the propietary ati driver.

Instead of downloading it from the ati page, try to use the ubuntu package manager.

Open Add/Remove programs, get sure that both boxes in the right top of the screen (propietary and unsupported) are checked and "any package" is selected in the drop menu. Search for ati.

Now click on system, check Ati Binary driver. Next...

And this should be all. I hope that it works.

Linux is easy as long as your hardware is well supported. When something is supported it's much more plug'n'play than windows. But when you find something not supported... well, the fun begins .

Javier.

[mbc0]

Re: ATI X1650 Kubundu

Many Thanks for your reply, I currently have a black screen when it boots, is there a "safe mode" I can enter to change this?

Again, Thanks very much for your reply...

[dibl]

Re: ATI X1650 Kubundu

I currently have a black screen when it boots

Is there a white "_" blinking in the upper left corner? If yes, hit Alt-F1, or else Ctrl-Alt-F1, and see if you get a text login prompt. If yes, you can log in and have a really fast text-based Linux system.



OK, I know that's not what you want. But if you can do that, then Javier or someone who knows ATI better than me can give you the package names that you will apt-get install from the command line interface (CLI).

[andrew4558]

Re: ATI X1650 Kubundu

Why don't you switch to level 3 and test it preventing to reinstall everything? Restore xorg.conf if it doesn't work (ati driver always backs up xorg.conf file in /etc/X11). And go on testing another ATI driver.

[javierrivera]

Re: ATI X1650 Kubundu

The best wat out of a "forced" command line is

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

This will give you a text mode wizard to reconfigure your server. The drivers than you can use are: "vesa","radeon","fglrx". They are in order of likely to work, worse perfomance. I mean vesa will work near always, but will you bad performance. "radeon" could work (support for you card is experimental), if it does it's my favourite. It will let you run beryl quite easy. "fglrx" is the ATI propietary driver, it's not installed by default, gives you the better performance, works well with the newer cards, but it's harder to setup a 3D desktop and is very unreliable on older cards.

Just follow the instructions on the screen, give the default answer to any question that you don't understand, and choose the easy monitor configuration route.

When it's finished reboot.

Javier.