ATi X300 Driver for Windows 8.1

I had to dig out my old ATi X300 card when the graphics card cooling fan on one of my desktop failed.  X300 is very old.  It was released in 2004.  It is always a challenge to get graphics this age to work in modem Windows.  To my surprise, it is actually easy.  Windows 8.1 seems to accept and use its dated Vista 64bit driver happily (http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/legacy?product=Legacy1&os=Windows%20Vista%20-%2064).

Instead of using the installer to install the driver, you run the installer to extract the files, but stop run after the extraction.  You then install the driver manually by asking Windows to look for drivers in the folder when you extract your drivers files.  Windows should pick up the driver, and install it.

Further details can be found at:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?s=f5175aaa350a453115ae1aef89d529f1&t=1536711

Update 2016-08-25: It works on Windows 10 too.  However, it needs to be install under safe mode!

Windows MCE

There is one program that I really like from Microsoft and that is the Media Center. I have been using it since the XP version. For the most part, the XP version is working great after all these years. However, in few areas XP starts to show its ages, and that is in new hardware support and handling.

I have recently got an ATi 4550 card to replace my trouble 8600GT card. This card has HDMI output which should save me from have two cables for carrying video and audio separately. Despite all my attempts, I couldn't get the sound to work as XP would not recognize the HDMI as an output. Since my brother has a similar setup and the sound work well under Windows 7, so I decided to upgrade my XP to Windows 7.

Presto, sound works as it should be plus now I can use my MCE remote to change channels that have successive numbers, e.g. 112. I have this problem for a long time and finally Microsoft has fixed it!!

Older ATi Card and Ubuntu

I have been using VESA driver instead of ATi driver for my old IBM Notebook due to the corrupted notification problem in Ubuntu.

Today, I have found the following from the Ubuntu site, which may seem to be the solution for my problem.

Window corruption with older ATI graphics cards

With older ATI graphics cards with 32MB or less of video RAM some corruption of direct rendered windows, for example OSD notifier windows, might appear. This may be worked around by disabling 'RenderAccel' in the Xorg configuration. (426582)

To do this first exit to the console using the following command:

sudo service gdm stop

Then create an Xorg configuration file with the command below:

sudo Xorg -configure

Then add the 'RenderAccel' option to /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Device"

...

Driver "radeon"

Option "RenderAccel" "off"

EndSection

And restart X/GDM.

sudo service gdm start

ATi and nVidia

Since the fan on my nVidia card was dying, I got my myself a new ATi 4550 card for my Media Center. It does more or less my old card can do except one thing which is crucial. Although most reviews on the Internet said the differences between the nVidia's Purevideo and the ATi's AVIVO are very little, and in many case ATi solution is recommend due to its passive cooling (silent) and HDMI inclusion, after having both cards, I can say the nVidia's PureVideo is a better option if SDTV is involved.

ATi and nVidia may both handles high definition video very well and can offload works from CPU, however, HD isn't everything! PureVideo has the advantage of deinterlacing SDTV video which ATi lacks. The lack of deinterlacing on ATi card makes live SDTV on my media center look horrible. The "comb" effect is so obvious. Interesting enough, there is a solution, and it is from nVidia. It seems that PureVideo can run on ATi card too. After putting PureVideo back to my computer, the deinterlacing problem solved.