During my 8 years of Linux on and off usage I have tried more distros than I have chocolate bars. Each one of my previous encounters meant that I had to spend at least 2 days configuring before I have a desktop that I was somewhat comfortable with. With Ubuntu Feisty Fawn's latest test beta --for the first time ever-- this was not the case. I was up and running with all the niceties I wanted within 2 hours.
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Member since:2006-01-20
I personally have a collection of no less that six video cards that have had to be scrapped because there was no driver for them for the only available versions of Windows.
Try the site of the manufacturer of the card or chipset.
But maybe those cards are over ten years old with an ISA or EISA interface? and can't even produce a decent picture on a 1024x768 monitor.
Member since:2007-02-17
//Try the site of the manufacturer of the card or chipset. //
One example, early chipset is Rendition Verite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendition_Verite
Vérité V2x00
Card was: Diamond's Stealth II S220. V2100-based
3D capable, PCI.
Manufacturer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Multimedia
Website here: http://www.diamondmm.com/
PCI graphics cards are here: http://www.diamondmm.com/PCI-Graphics-cards.php
Search reveals:
http://www.dmmsupport.com/index.php?action=kb
"Search Stealth II S220
No results found."
... nothing.
Google reveals:
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22Stealth+II+S220%22+dri...
... windows 95/98 drivers appears as good as you are going to get.
However, there is some promise that it was supported (by someone) as late as Windows 2000.
http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=6147
I never had Windows 2000 installed. The card does not work in Windows XP.
If a video card has gone out of production, and Windows goes up a version or two, you are out of luck.
Mind you, there is no driver for Linux either.
Next card is a Nvidia Riva TNT M64. There is an XP driver for this card, but it doesn't work.
http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=6147
The next card is a nvidia M440 SE.
This card has problems with AGP on recent motherboards, and so no 3D acceleration works any more anyway.
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/1386/
The next card is an ATI Radeon 9250. This has the same or similar issue with the AGP driver.
There are several other cards, all obsolete now due to driver issues, but these four are the only ones that were originally 3D capable.
I can probably get the nvidia M440 SE working on an older motherboard. I do have the ATI card still in use, but only because it is installed in a AMD Duron 1GHz machine that is quite venerable. I expect to have to scrap this card if I update the motherboard.
All of the above cards originally worked in 3D at 1024x768. The ATI Radeon 9250 was supposedly "hot" (albeit at the tail end of the market) as recently as 2004.
http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=576
Apparently, you can still buy one of these cards:
http://www.amazon.com/ATI-RADEON-9250-Video-Upgrade/dp/B00062N5AE
BTW, none of these video cards have a prayer in Vista.
Edited 2007-03-18 12:43
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Member since:
2007-02-17
{ My radeon x800 card is never recognised properly by X, I always have to edit xorg.conf to change ati to radeon }
You have listed one problem, and Eugenia has listed another.
I personally have a collection of no less that six video cards that have had to be scrapped because there was no driver for them for the only available versions of Windows.
Windows Vista shipped to the public without properly working nvidia drivers, and a longish list of other driver problems.
http://www.playfuls.com/news_06594_Missing_Drivers_And_Security_Hol...
My list trumps yours.