Linux and an old Video card

Vhdblood

I'm trying to run Ubuntu 6.10 on an old computer, and it runs fine, other than the fact that the resolution won't change from 640x480. I'm running a Trident ProVidia 9685. I have no idea what to do about this problem, because I'm not too horribly experienced with Ubuntu, or Linux in general for that matter. I have however went in and edited the file that controls the options for resolutions, but this didn't work. I might as well mention that no matter what Linux distro I use, the same thing happens. Anyway, Help!

Apreche

What X driver are you using? Most likely you are using the vesa driver which only supports resolutions up to 640x480. This is a driver that works with any video card, and is often the failsafe default when X is automatically configured. You need to figure out which X driver will work with that card and use it instead. My guess is that you want to use the trident driver. I can't be sure though, as I've never encountered such a strange video card.

I'm sure a little tweaking of the xorg.conf is all you need to do to fix this problem. It's something that you really should learn. Despite this being such an easy problem to fix, I would still go out and buy a cheap NVidia card for like $20. GeForce4 cards are easy to get, and they work teh awesome.

HMTKSteve

How old is the computer?

What sort of slots do you have? I might have some 4MB PCI video cards kicking around...

Vhdblood

How might I go about running X with the Trident drivers? Also, as far as I know, this computer just has PCI slots. It's freakin old, and I'm not sure about the proc speed and stuff, think I have around 96 megs of ram.

HMTKSteve

Are you in the states? I'd be willing to mail you out a 2-4MB PCI card from Diamond. I know they work on Linux.

Vhdblood

Sure man, that'd be great. I'm in Alabama. I would PM you my address, but I can't figure out how to PM. Just let me know how to PM and i'd be glad to.