Getting ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 to work on Karmic 9.10

[mlissner]

Hello, I just installed Karmic on an old Thinkpad R40 laptop, and it's giving me nothing but trouble.

I have never had to deal with an ATI card before, but this one freezes the system a few seconds after I log into the system, usually when I do something that involves graphics work.

I've tried pretty much everything I can find, but nothing seems to make the thing work. Either the login screen doesn't come up at all, or shortly after I log in, it freezes.

I've noticed that the computer doesn't have an xorg.conf file, but I've tried putting some values in there. I've tried a PPA that was recommended somewhere, and I've tried a few other things.

I'm really not sure how to proceed to get this thing to work. Does anybody have any suggestions as to how to get this computer functioning. It's really driving me crazy.

[disneyfriedhistory]

I'm having the same problem with my t30. It has the radeon 7500 as well. So far I've been able to disable visual effects and get decent results. I also created an xorg.conf file like the following:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "ati"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
Option "AIGLX" "true"
EndSection

This config file at least reduced a lot of the residual bugs that seemed to be floating around. But still no luck with compiz / visual effects.

Hope this helps.

[Astinsan]

The t30's video unit has only 16mb of ram. Switch to a color depth of 16 instead of 24. It should work after that. Also check this thread for some hints. http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-32015.html

Hope that helps

[apirec]

If I switch to a color depth of 16 instead of 24, all the videos become unwatchable slow and glxgears output is totally broken. When I tell mplayer to use another output driver, it works, but I can't tell firefox that for playing youtube, etc...

[disneyfriedhistory]

This used to be my solution in earlier versions of ubuntu. But I was definitely using a color depth of 24 with the last two. So I don't think this is the problem.

[disneyfriedhistory]

Okay, this has worked for me: Downgrade to the old jaunty mesa and glx drivers. Then tweak your xorg.conf with what I suggested above. This first link is the discussion: http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-x.../msg32591.html
And this second link has a very easy to follow "how to":
http://www.ode2.com/?p=44

Good luck! Report back any problems so we can keep people informed. If you get things working, also let us know at ThinkWiki.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Talk:A...ty_Radeon_7500