Back Track and ATI Video card
 

I have a dell inspiron 1501 with an ATI Xpress series video card. I am unable to load the software because I do not get any video. It starts up and after I select the mode the screen goes black. I am assuming it is a compatability issue. Any suggestions?

How long did you wait for that black screen to change to graphics?

I had the same thing happen to me with nvidia graphics. I was just about to press the power button to turn the machine off when graphics suddenly came up (about 15 seconds after turning power on). I'm assuming Back Track was doing some hardware detection in that time.

I have tried it two types of Dells with similar video cards. Both times I waited about 4 - 5 minutes with not video. I have been told that I probably need to recompile the kernal. Any suggestions.

I have experience with this Dell. Same thing happened with a Slackware 12 installation. It from the acpi implementation in the kernel. Append the following parameters to the kernel:
(if you are using grub press tab an write, and if you use lilo, you must reinstall it)

After it booted, install the drivers from ATI and compile a kernel >= 2.6.24

Thanks I will give that a try.