[SOLVED] ATI Radeon express 200M not working

[Newsboys6]

Hey guys,

I am new to linux in a sense, I have dabbled in fedora in the past but its been over a year.

I would really like to get into and understand linux. If I did not I would have installed windows instead by now.

I am running Kubuntu 9.04 on an HP dv5000 with broadcomm wireless and ATI video (sounds fun right?), the broadcom is working fine its the ATI that is not.

I have gone through multiple threads here and on google searches and it all seems to end the same every time. Purple garbled Kubuntu on the screen twice with jibberish at the bottom and weird red letters at the top. It stays on this screen indefinitely and will not boot.

I am on my gosh knows what number install here and would really appreciate some step by step help on getting this working.


Thank you so much in advance I will type into terminal what I am told and will paste all text here. I just need some help please.

Hopefully this is the right forum as even though it is hardware related, I am still a total noob.

[Snowhog]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

Look through: HOWTO: Install and use the Envy script installer for video drivers

[Newsboys6]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

Tried that, envyng is pretty nice as after I got the no boot I was able to uninstall the driver at the prompt after hitting the escape key on boot and did not have to re-install my OS.

So, long story short it's still a no go. I think I read somewhere that the latest fglrx drivers do not support older ATI chipsets which is the driver that I believe envyng installed.


So where do we go from here, what's next?

[muzicman0]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

Have you tried installing 8.04? I assume you are trying 9.04 right now. This might narrow it down a bit...

mm0

P.S. I believe 9.04 has a newer version of xorg, which helps control video hardware. The 200M is pretty old IIRC.

[Newsboys6]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

So you're saying that it would probably be a little wiser and I might avoid a few more problems if I just stepped down and installed Kubuntu 8.04?


I might just have to consider that if it will save us all a headache.


Awaiting a reply before moving on this though.

[apparle]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

Are you using the live CD or you have installed the system.
I have Radeon Xpress 200 which is older than yours but mine work fine.
did you try this
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver
On my system I get smooth desktop effects also.
Try increasing the video memory in BIOS, maybe it'll help.
I have set mine to 256MB

[Newsboys6]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

the system is installed via live cd it is on the HD

I don't believe that I have tried the suggestion listed above but I will now after reading thoroughly.

Thanks to everyone who has posted so far.

One thing thats kind of bothering me about that page is in the editing of the xorg.conf file it says to use pci and when i use lspci i see PCIE in parenthesis so will I need to list it in xorg.conf as PCI or PCIE?

I get the whole BudID scheme it is reported as 1:05.0 so in xorg it will be 1:5:0.

[Newsboys6]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

I followed that guide and my comp booted to a command prompt.

I am wondering if the problem is in my xorg.conf

I noticed that the guide did not discuss a modules section and that may be a problem.

Here is my xorg.conf is there anything in here that would cause my comp to boot to a command prompt and not into the GUI?

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
    Device     "Radeon 200M"
    Monitor     "Laptop Screen"
	DefaultDepth	24
	SubSection "Display"
       Depth  24
       Modes  "1280x800" "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load	"dri"
	Load	"GLcore"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Radeon 200M"
	Driver	"ati"
    BusID  "PCI:1:5:0"
    Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Laptop Screen"
    Option     "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier   "Default Layout"
    Screen     "Default Screen"
    InputDevice   "Generic Keyboard"
    InputDevice   "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Mode 0666
EndSection
    
Section "Extensions"
    Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Again, thanks in advance.

[Newsboys6]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

I read in the default xorg.conf file that many things that were controlled in xorg.conf were now done automatically in the new system.

So instead of following that website by letter, I built my xorg.conf using that guide and only stuck to sections that were there by default. Well the computer booted just fine with one problem. The text was FRIGGIN HUGE!!

I think I am on the virge of getting the video set up just fine if someone could just please help me get the text size to not be huge.

I have learned quite a bit about linux through troubleshooting this stuff and would love to continue so please help.

Thanks.

PS: booting xorg.conf

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Radeon 200M"
	Driver	"ati"
    BusID  "PCI:1:5:0"
    Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Laptop Screen"
    Option     "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
    Device     "Radeon 200M"
    Monitor     "Laptop Screen"
	DefaultDepth	24
	SubSection "Display"
       Depth  24
       Modes  "1280x800" "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

[muzicman0]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

system settings:appearance:fonts:force fonts dpi = 96 DPI

try that.

mm0

[Newsboys6]

Re: ATI Radeon express 200M not working

well everything looks much sharper, web pages render much faster and scroll much smoother

the text isn't huge and glxgears gets a lot more than 60fps


Thanks so much guys everything seems to be in order here

[muzicman0]

Re: [SOLVED] ATI Radeon express 200M not working

woo hoo!