Video issues with T42 running Etch and more

["justin joseph" <justinjoseph007@gmail.com>]

Hi,

It was an interesting week of installing Debian Etch on my laptop(T42
Type 2379).  Have managed to come so far... Starting installation from
a single CD.. getting the rest from the Debian mirror here
(http://ftp.iitm.ac.in/debian/), resizing and repartitioning(NTFS).
brining up eth1(Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG), and resolving
certain other issues.

Have now come up against a stone wall and need help.  The video card
on this machine is a ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW
[Radeon Mobility 7500].  X is working but I don't think its working
the way it should.

I am unable to find from google, why lspci says that this card is
128MB whereas it is 32MB.

The relevant lspci -vvv output is

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon
Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500] (prog-if 00 [VGA])
       Subsystem: IBM Unknown device 0530
       Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop-
ParErr- Stepping+ SERR+ FastB2B+
       Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium
> TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
       Latency: 66 (2000ns min), Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
       Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
       Region 0: Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
       Region 1: I/O ports at 3000 [size=256]
       Region 2: Memory at c0100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
       [virtual] Expansion ROM at c0120000 [disabled] [size=128K]
       Capabilities: <access denied>

my free -m output is

justin@thinkpad:~$ free -m
            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           504        230        273          0          8         96
-/+ buffers/cache:        125        379
Swap:         1011          0       1011
justin@thinkpad:~$

I see that there is only 504MB of ram where as it must have been 512.
where has the rest 8mb gone? I understand that this happens only when
its shared by the VGA controller and in this case why would the VGA
controller share it because its got 32 MB of vram.

how can I know how much ram is being used by xorg.  I looked at the
log file for xorg but could not see definitive answers.

I can provide the full lspci output if required and would be nice if
someone could send me an xorg.conf which fully utilizes this system.

on the sidelines, I were wondering why *most* of the subsystems on
this T42 shows up as R50e on the lspci output.  It that usual or has
Lenovo conned me into purchasing R50e machine with just T42 name with
better lid material.

Thanks in advance
Justin