Intel i810 Video
How-To Install and/or Configure

Intel began shipping an 'On Board' video chip a while back that has made it's way into many motherboards, and as a result, into many of our computers here at the lab.
The chip is called the i810, and soon to be the i815. That doesn't sound like earth breaking stuff, but there is one little problem with this card. It used the computers main memory. That sounds great in principle, but the problem is that this makes some things like, probing your video card for memory, just a tad bit hard.
But do no dismay, because you actually still can use this card, and it does work rather well. It definatly has it's limitations, but for a basic video card, it's not bad.

Here is a revised installation instructions to get the X-Windows working on an Intel i810e video board. NOTE: for a Fermi Linux 6.1.2, or a RedHat 6.2 installation, you can skip step 2 because the proper rpm's will already be there. This also means that you can do the Xconfiguration during the install and have it work correctly.
If you install RedHat 7.0 you do not have to go through all of these steps during the installation. It does all these steps without you seeing it.

  1. Install Fermi Linux
  2. Install the correct rpm's that work with the driver.
  3. run 'Xconfigurator' and follow instructions below
  4. run 'startx'

IMPORTANT

You MUST follow these instructions or it will NOT work. I don't know why, I didn't write it. The only variations can be on step 1, 3, and to a small degree 9.

  1. Start Xconfigurator - either by 'setup' and choosing Xconfiguration, or 'Xconfigurator' or the regular installation uses it.
  2. at "Choose a card" select 'Unlisted Card' (last card on list)
  3. at "Pick a Server" select 'SVGA'
  4. at "Monitor Setup" select your monitor (Generic Multisyc works well)
  5. at "Screen Configuration" select 'Dont Probe'
  6. at "Video Memory" select '4mb'
  7. at "Clockchip Configuration" select 'No Clockchip Setting'
  8. at "Probe for clocks" select 'Skip'
  9. at "Select Video Modes" select '16bit' '1152x864' (or less, not more)
  10. at "Starting X" select 'Skip'

dawson@fnal.gov
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November 14, 2000