ati 9800 pro card problems, save me from slipping back to Winbollocks!

crash75uk · 08-12-2004, 02:29 PM

I've recently been on a bit of a spending spree and have installed a new 9800 pro card(power color). Anyway on booting slackware with the new card didn't load (as expected) but i went to change the settings by runnig xf86config, but i can't get it to run, so can't load the drivers to start my gui interface.

Also part of my purchase i bought a new US robotics wirless 802.11g card that i want to configure. US robotics recommend some software which uses the windows drivers(which are an exe anyway) that cost $19.99. Yeah, i know it's not a lot but kind kind of urks me to kind of go out and buy software for Linux when i've managed to avoid paying for any windows software for years. Without my wireless network slackware isn't of much use to me!

And i finally invested in a new HD, which i formatted with ntfs but would like to be able to browse through slackware is there a way of doing this?

Please save from relapsing back into the world of windows

Cheers

hw-tph · 08-12-2004, 03:04 PM

You shouldn't need to change too many things in your XFree86/X.org config file so just edit it by hand. The changes you need to make are outlined in the documentation. If all else fails you can try using fglrxconfig which comes with the ATI driver package. Did you build and install the driver already? Does it load properly?

I have no idea about the USR WLAN card but check out the evil ndiswrapper project. It might work but I strongly advice against using it.

As long as you have NTFS read support enabled in your kernel you should be able to mount the NTFS partition(s) and browse/read from them. Mount it with mount -t ntfs <device> <mountpoint>

Håkan

crash75uk · 08-14-2004, 07:00 AM

Thanks

So, what's the issue with the ndiswrapper project?????

hw-tph · 08-14-2004, 11:27 AM

The word "evil" is a symbolic link leading to the ACX100 project's view on the issue.
Basically, my view on this is pretty much the same as theirs:

Quote:

Say NO to Windows NDIS Linux compatibility layer cludges!

At first, having a way to get wireless cards that are unsupported on Linux to work by loading their Windows NDIS driver on Linux sounds very nice.
However, there are several reasons why this might not be so nice after all:

a) translation layer needed -> loss of CPU cycles and huge amount of Windows API interfacing needed for this extra layer

b) the need for a translation layer implies an "incompatibility" between different structures -> loss due to especially inefficient/unsuitable translation methods in bad cases

c) It's Linux which is THE all-interfacing fully-compatible networking platform, not Windows. An NDIS layer may very easily cause many manufacturers (which are often already too lazy as it is) to say "so what? Linux has NDIS compatibility, so why develop a real driver?", thus severely bottlenecking Linux's otherwise very advanced networking features, and having it forcibly remain sub-standard compared to Windows

d) Due to the normal NDIS interface, having special Linux capabilities in the driver is probably not possible

e) And the WORST one: it severely reduces the incentive to write a native driver, since many potential developers will use the NDIS cludge instead

...not to mention that this restricts wireless card use to x86 only, whereas our driver already starts to work on some Apple gear.

If you're wondering why it's even a major Wine developer who happens to say that, then let me tell you that while Wine is very important since many important pre-existing and unmaintained Windows business applications need to be made to run on Linux somehow, there's not the slightest need to start doing so with newly created wireless cards... Andreas Mohr
P.S.: and please keep one thing in mind: whatever hardware companies do, it's almost always about market share. So if Linux support for a particular card happens to be sub-standard, then don't hesitate to vote with your pockets!

Håkan

crash75uk · 08-16-2004, 12:01 PM

I'm not having much luck with the graphics card(powercolr 9800 pro), i can't find any support for it or the drivers(checked the powercolor site), although i'm probably looking in the wrong place. So at the moment got a slackware dist that boot with errors and i can't startx or even use my network card.

rustee · 08-16-2004, 02:42 PM

Hope this link helps:
http://www.rage3d.com/content/articles/atilinuxhowto/

crash75uk · 08-19-2004, 04:52 PM

Ok, i've put the graphics card on the back burner for a bit and concentrating on the wireless card, as interent connection is my priority. I downloaded the ndiswrapper and installed, i followed the installation documentation but it doesn't detect the hardware. I used the latest ndiswrapper ver 9 and used the the latest US robotics drivers. I realise that the ndiswrapper project isn't ideal but it seems to be my only option. During the install i noticed it said installing and dropped out immediately, i checked the /etc/ndiw.../ dir and only the inf file was copied across.