2018 Brings A New Linux X.Org Display Driver Update For The ATI RAGE 128

[Adarion]

did I hear vintage ATi card support? Count me in! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxaR2dkUpLI

Ah, exsys. Well, well, well. Or not so well. They sometimes tend to end products and then support is gone all of a sudden. And then they just tell you to dump another 120 Euros in the next iteration, even though it was like 5 months ago that I bought the very controller and had some questions about it (v. slow boot and the likes).
Besides, ~ 35 Euros is still quite some money for a card with questionable support and a chip that old.
Nonetheless, an interesting find.

[trek]

With a less intensive desktop, Lubuntu 14.04, it was actually usable, just not for internet browsing, because it still took 2 minutes for Firefox to load, and it still took almost a minute for anything with Javascript to render.

disabling javascript would give you a 10x improvement on loading pages

[cybertraveler]

did I hear vintage ATi card support? Count me in! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxaR2dkUpLI

Great video, thanks. I enjoyed that. It's a really beautiful system. I was blown away by some of the ergonomic design features like the fanless design. Also the pop-out handle for extracting the hardware cage from the case. The capacitive power button is also a really nice touch.

[boxie]

I have used a modern desktop on such a system...
It was an iBook G3, in 2014, it had 256MB of RAM, a 40GB 4200RPM drive, a GPU with 32MB of VRAM, USB 1.1, 802.11B WiFi support.
It did work, after 5 minutes, it would finally boot up to a Gnome 3 desktop on Debian 7.5, and 5 minutes later, you could actually do stuff. I took 2 minutes just for IceWeasle to load, and a further 1 minute to get a web-page loaded. Of course, the whole time, the resource monitor revealed, RAM was actually the bottleneck...
With a less intensive desktop, Lubuntu 14.04, it was actually usable, just not for internet browsing, because it still took 2 minutes for Firefox to load, and it still took almost a minute for anything with Javascript to render.
That system now belongs to someone else, who still uses it to this day as a machine to use around the house. It now has 640MB of RAM, but is still on 14.04, same 40GB HDD, same 802.11B.
I suspect, that a 64GB SSD, would vastly increase the performance, because NOW loading anything up, it's actually the 4200RPM drive as the bottleneck.

that's awesome - just goes to show how much more power modern systems have!

[edwaleni]

Rage128 was OEM'ed to a very large number of manufacturers for many years and after the desktop moved on to newer tech, it had a lengthy life as the VGA chip for server boards.

The Rage128 was also the video chip for the All-In-Wonder boards and I think contained some codec assist depending on the one used. I still see AIW boards being used to import old VHS cassettes to digital with Windows 98. When MSFT and ATI refused to port legacy AIW functions into Windows 2000/XP, many people just stayed on Windows 98 and let them run. When ATSC came along even more were retired.

[rene]

did I hear vintage ATi card support? Count me in! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxaR2dkUpLI

[mzs.112000]

this is true - not sure I would want to use a modern desktop on it though, that 16-32mb of memory might be a tad limiting these days!

I have used a modern desktop on such a system...
It was an iBook G3, in 2014, it had 256MB of RAM, a 40GB 4200RPM drive, a GPU with 32MB of VRAM, USB 1.1, 802.11B WiFi support.
It did work, after 5 minutes, it would finally boot up to a Gnome 3 desktop on Debian 7.5, and 5 minutes later, you could actually do stuff. I took 2 minutes just for IceWeasle to load, and a further 1 minute to get a web-page loaded. Of course, the whole time, the resource monitor revealed, RAM was actually the bottleneck...
With a less intensive desktop, Lubuntu 14.04, it was actually usable, just not for internet browsing, because it still took 2 minutes for Firefox to load, and it still took almost a minute for anything with Javascript to render.
That system now belongs to someone else, who still uses it to this day as a machine to use around the house. It now has 640MB of RAM, but is still on 14.04, same 40GB HDD, same 802.11B.
I suspect, that a 64GB SSD, would vastly increase the performance, because NOW loading anything up, it's actually the 4200RPM drive as the bottleneck.

[puleglot]

Looks like it is still being produced:

http://www.exsys.de/index.php?page=product&info=264

[Adarion]

That is good news, often one of these old cards is enough if you just want to fire up a purpose-bound-computer and don't want to be entirely headless. Just enough to boot, have an accelerated console and maybe a simple X (w. XFCE, enlightenment or the likes). Doesn't use much power, works in nearly every computer, doesn't become hot and is usually very affordable. The only culprit might be the set of interfaces to the outside if you lack VGA or A->D converters on your monitors.

[nomadewolf]

i wonder of this guy actually has any working hardware to test on

I do... just the card, though.