Hi folks!

I'm using a PCChips M825g v.9.2a motherboard, wich uses the KM266 chipset. The AGP GART is set to be loaded in rc.modules. When the system is booting I have a message saying that I should try agp_try_unsupported=1. I've already added that to the lilo.conf append and nothing happened.
What should I do in order to have my agp recognized and working?
My video drivers( ATI RADEON 9600) are installed. I'm working under kernerl 2.4.x brought by Slackware 11.

Thanks for helping.

I had this same problem in a Gigabyte GA8-TRS350MT motherboard with the ATI RS-300 chipset under the 2.6.14.3 kernel on FC3. I never managed to get it going, and eventually switched to FC6 with a 2.6.18.1 kernel.

Have you checked the AGP GART driver's website to see if the chipset you have is supported? If it is not, there is nothing you can do about it...

Maybe if you try a more recent kernel or distro, and no a 2.4 series one?

Thanks rylan76,
following what you said, I've installed the new 2.6 kernel and the agp worked out fine!!!

Only now I've realized that my videos on VLC are worst than before setting up correctly the video card and the agp support.
How can I configure my video card to use its maximum resources? In WinXP I could go to a Control Center and tell the videocard to work like I wanted. How can I do that in Linux?

Thank you very much for helping!!!

PS: i'm using Slackware 11,kernel 2.6.18, agpgart 0.0.101, motherboard PCChips M825g v.9.2a, videocard ATI RADEON 9600.

Not sure about the Radeon or ATI cards in general under Linux. I have a Nvidia based card (7950GT) and the Nvidia linux driver you can download for this supports XV (xvideo) - a type of protocol for directly accessing the screen for video playback in an X-server.

I get excellent DVD playback with Xine and really excellent movie playback with MPlayer on this card by doing the following.

First, I install Linux. I currently run on FC6. I then install the Nvidia linux driver. Then I install Xine from a Fedora RPM, and MPlayer I compile myself with GCC 3.4 (not 4.1 that comes with FC6 - its MPlayer binary doesn't work). I then run xine and MPlayer in XV mode, and I get excellent full-screen playback.

I have never used VLC so I can't explain why it (maybe) is not working well. Also, as far as I know, ATI cards aren't that well supported in Linux. I do not even know if you get a Linux driver for ATI card. Most probably part of your problem is that you are actually running an extremely slow, unaccelerated SVGA emulation driver in X-Windows, which limits your card to what the emulator can provide in software. I suspect that Nvidia has got some video-playback relative hardware accelleration stuff in their Nvidia linux driver that is used to improve video playback, even under Linux.

What processor do you have? If you have an older, slower processor this can also impact your video playback since I suspect most of the demuxing needed to be done by VLC has to be done in software (since you have no dedicated driver loaded for the Radeon) and if you have a slow PC or not much RAM this can also degrade video playback quality.

Also, when playing back DVD's, you'll need to be sure that DMA is turned on for the DVD drive that is reading the DVD. Otherwise things can also get very slow and jerky, no matter how fast your system is.

thanks again, rylan
I just don't understand why it was far better before I made the right configuration for my videocard and my agp slot...

just for testing I've uninstalled the ati driver and the video playback in VLC became alright again... I don't know if I'm getting any 3D acceleration... I wish I could use ati driver and have a smooth video playback at the same time...

Well, that's using ATI for you. I've had several very bad experiences with ATI & AMD, and the past five years I've gone Nvidia / Intel only (GFX & CPU) and I have had no problems with drivers or reliability... in Linux or Windows.