Re: ATI FIreGL4 drivers for ia64

[duraid@octopus.com.au]

> Hi List!
>
> We recently ported our ia64 machine which was running hp-ux to
> debian3.1. Installation was a breeze. But we are having problems in
> bringing up X. I understand it is because of the ATI FireGL4 graphics
> card that we have. I googled a lot but couldn't find drivers for this
> particular card. Could anyone help me with this?

I am not sure if there ever was an Itanium Linux driver for the FireGL4 -
this is a very old video card indeed. There might have been one, but if
you can't find it on the HP website, I'd have no idea where to look.
Talking to ATI is like talking to a brick wall, unfortunately.

> I am okay with compiling a driver. But where do I get this from? Any
> help is greatly appreciated.

Again, I'm not 100% sure, but I honestly think your best bet is to attempt
to find a newer ATI FireGL X1 or Z1 board that fits in your machine. These
card should be quite cheap these days, but not so old that they are
impossible to find. If you have a zx2000, any ATI X1 or Z1 board you can
find will work, and you can use the driver at http://r300.sf.net if you
need hardware accelerated 3D. (From memory, this driver is now included in
the latest X.org server sources anyway, so if you upgrade to the very
latest X server yourself, you won't need to install a separate driver.)

If you have a zx6000, the story is almost the same except that you need to
ensure you get a video card that has the longer AGP Pro connector - this
is so the video card can get its power from the AGP Pro slot of the
zx6000, and not from a 4-pin 3.5" floppy drive power connector which the
zx6000 does not have.

If you are not restricted to ATI, almost any AGP Nvidia video card will
work fine as a 2D video board, however you will have to use NVIDIA's buggy
and outdated binary driver if you need accelerated 3D. And again, if you
have a zx6000, make sure the card you get takes its power from the AGP
slot only.

       Good luck,

       Duraid