LinuxQuestions.org - ATI 3D working in Ubuntu 6.06! How I got it working.

I have been banging my head against the wall for the last 6 months trying to get the ATI drivers working on my HP 6130 laptop. I've been on linuxquestions.org, and other sites trying to find the answer. I found it today...FINALLY!

My laptop is an AMD64 with the ATI 200M video card. A real nasty combo, as I'm sure others with the same laptop/config could tell you. Ubuntu 6.06 installed fine and my 2D video was great, correct resolution and depth. I found a couple sites that solved my problems with getting 3D to work.

This page tells you what commands to issue at the command line to install and configure the card.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI

I've managed this several times with fedora, suse etc, with the same result. When I restart X, I get a blank screen. No video at all. I usually poke at the computer a little after this, and try again in a few days. I'm sure some out there can relate. This is a very discouraging result.

This is the answer I've been looking for!

http://ensode.net/ati_radeon_xpress_200m_linux.html

You have to change the video memory settings in the BIOS for the card to work in Linux after installing the driver! For whatever reason, the ATI driver doesn't allocate the on board video memory. You must switch it to UMA, or shared video memory for the 3D video to work.

Here is an explanation on the Xpress 200 by HP.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...cname=bph04502

This may or may not apply to other brands that use the same ATI chip. I have no way of testing that, but hopefully this information will help someone else out there trying to get this to work.