Posts Tagged ‘old computers’

Bulgaria must be out of the European Union!

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Bulgaria to be out of European Union immediately. The only hope for restoration of Bulgarian Economy

Bulgaria is European Union state member since January 1 2007. I write this words with deep regret. We Bulgarians have already a bitter experience for being in hard conditions, practically the situation in Bulgaria is like this since the complete fall of Communism in 1991. We've been lied to hav better future in the European Union over the last years. 6 Years passed since our acceptance in EU and for this years I can say nothing changed for good in our country. We've seen "how good and bright" future awaits in the European Union over the last years. It is all lies, nothing changed for good for us Bulgarians, not that the communism was different but at least in Communism we had some working economy, now with this EU and all the restrictions (quotas for production), conditions to meet factories to close and reduction of our Atomic energy blocks, we've been totally wasted. If you walk the street you see the desperation and the absurdity of everything in my homeland. It is more than clear, that we need change and the only change can happen if we get out of the European Union. Our politicians made a huge mistake, for lobbying to join the EU. We become another waste country for Western second hand cars – a car graveyard. The old and hard to recycle cars has been pushed to my country. Old computers, low quality food from West, idiotic change of already working systems in the government with dis-functional Computerized ones. This is a very small list of all the shit we got from the EU. Big food store chains expanded there market, we are used for cheap labor and a hot-point for call-centers. We Bulgarians are literally used and abused by Western Civilization. We were bought as white slaves for "candies" and empty promises. If our politicians don't wake up and see Bulgaria is impossible to survive within the abnormal European Union our country is doomed. anyways we should not desparate, there is hope for us. God will help us for we've been tortured for 5 centuries by Turkish, we stopped invasion of Turks to Western Europe historically, we saved the Jews from extermination during Second World War. Bulgarians have always been a honest and good minded people. Now with this technological insanity adopted from the west and all the "going nowhere" of European union we're a miserable victim. Wake up dear Bulgarians, we have nothing in common with the European Union, neither writing, nor language nor our 15 century culture merges with most of EU countries. Even in religious aspect we're different. AThe only way with future for Bulgaria is out of the European Union and join forces with our Russian, Belarusian and other Slavonic brother nations. Rise brothers and sisters and lobby for Bulgaria being out of the European Union!!!!

SAY NO TO EUROPEAN UNION – SAY ES TO BULGARIAN FUTURE !!!!

How to configure Matrox Graphics MGA G200 AGP on Debian and Ubuntu Linux

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

I just had to configure a Matrox Graphics MGA G200 AGP on a very old computer installed with Xubuntu 12.04. The Graphic card is not automatically detected and Xorg Linux server automatically runs X without generating any config in /etc/X11/xorg.conf after Xubuntu install. By default Linux uses the VESA driver for running X, the problem with VESA is it is very slow in videos and is only good for text reading and simple browsing. For watching video and Youtube, one needs to install the custom Video card driver on this host the Video card was identifying in lpsci as:

user@oldhost:~$ lspci |grep -i matrox
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G200 AGP (rev 03)

In deb package repositories, there is a special xorg MGA driver suited to run MGA cards, thus to use it I had to first install it with:

 

user@oldhost:~# apt-get install --yes xserver-xorg-video-mga
....

For allowing card to normally watch movies – you have to have installed a special video driver which is to be lated built from source:

user@oldhost:~#  apt-get -b source mga-vid-source
user@oldhost:~# dpkg -i /usr/src/modules/mga-vid/debian/mga-vid-source_2.6.32-1_i386.deb
....

There is also special program to test if MGA video driver is installed and work correctly mga_vid_test. To have it installed and use it you have to be running on 2.6.x Linux kernel cause it is a bit of old software plus it is necessary to have installed mga-vid-common i.e.:

user@oldhost:~# apt-get install --yes mga-vid-common
.....

I did a quick research online for other people who faced similar problem and found in Ubuntu Forums the following MGA G200 recommended xorg.conf
Below config was little modified by me as by default it was configured to run in 1280×1024 in 24 bit depth color. Usually 24 bit color is high for old cards, plus the resolution of 1280 seemed quite high for this piece of old iron, so I decided to use the better suiting old computers 1024×768 in 16 bit color depth.