Working with bad video memory

[Alex Deucher]

On Dec 24, 2007 5:27 PM, Greg Michalec <greg at primate.net> wrote:
> Hi -
> I have an emachines m6805 laptop with integrated Mobility Radeon 9600
> M10 (RV350) running Ubuntu 7.10. I'm pretty sure my video ram has
> recently failed somehow. I could see the boot process fine, but upon
> enter X, the screen would black out, and sometimes the machine would
> hang. Even odder things happen when I try booting into that other OS
> (XP) in anything but "safe mode". I was limping along using the VESA
> driver (running 1024x768 on my 1280x800 widescreen :( ), until I decided
> to try setting the GARTSize option in xorg.conf to "0" - and it worked!

I think it's more likely bad system ram or funkiness with your AGP
bridge.  GARTSize refers to the amount of system memory that the chip
uses for various things.

> I'm back running native resolution, using the ati driver! However, i
> think because I have no video memory enabled, i'm unable to get DRI.

The radeon DRI depends on GART memory for several things.

Alex