at long last, the new ati drivers WORK!
 

Hello!
just got my 8500 to work on debian stable with the new drivers released by ati... the previous version was so messed up that just moving a windows across the screen caused my pc to crash, but the new ones seem to work fine!

Refer to this excellent guide by Fabio Stanchina:

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/flavio.sta...installer.html

Good luck!

The files he links to are old files, in case you were interested in getting new ones from ATI directly.

He also makes the entire process very overly complicated. So unless you are having issues with the official ATI instructions(or mine based on theirs) are not complete enough most users will spend a lot longer doing a whole lot more commands, the majority of which are extraneous. It also is a much longer task to install them all his way rather than the standard way.

I would recommend that guide only as a fail safe if you have tried the normal instructions fully and still cannot get the fglrx drivers to work.