graphics card

so it says under system requirements:

Graphics card capable of at least 1024x768 resolution, which is not using the NVidia or ATI fglrx proprietary drivers, and which is not an onboard video chipset that shares main memory with the CPU

every card i have been able to find is either ati or nvidia....................where can i find a card that is not?

Hi

so it says under system requirements:
Graphics card capable of at least 1024x768 resolution, which is not using the NVidia or ATI fglrx proprietary drivers, and which is not an onboard video chipset that shares main memory with the CPU
every card i have been able to find is either ati or nvidia....................where can i find a card that is not?

The important section is not using the NVidia or ATI fglrx proprietary drivers

The nvidia proprietary implementation of GLX especially (and some ATI) causes problems with the openGL libraries Axis uses, you can use the open source drivers or just the vesa driver.

which is not an onboard video chipset that shares main memory with the CPU

This is simplistic and plain wrong in some cases, I have 4 machines all using onboard graphics with no problems, 3 of them returning < 10K base thread jitter
All depends upon the actual chipset and if you have enough RAM

What machine do you actually have?

regards

here is what the machine tells me it is. my son built this one for me a few years ago.

O.S. - Windows XP 2002 SP3

Processor - Intel Celeron 2.8 Ghz

Ram - 2.81 Ghz 960 mb

Computer - ACPI Uniprocessor PC

Bios - Phoenix Award Bios P4M8P-M7

Main HDD - Excelstor Technology J8160S 153 gb 94gb free space. File system NTFS

Display adapter - VIA/S3G Unichrome Pro IGP

Driver date - 3/8/2007 Version - 6.14.10.357

Mem range - F4000000-F7FFFFFF
FB000000-FBFFFFFF
IRQ 16
00A0000-000BFFFF
I/O range - 03B0-03BB
03C0-03DF

Hi

All I can suggest is that you install Linuxcnc and deal with any actual problems, rather than anticipated ones.

You have a Via S3 video chipset, which is a old but well supported one.
There is a via driver and an openchrome one too, so see how it goes rather than buying another graphics card.

You would be best advised to download the Ubuntu 8.04 based Live CD. It will work much better with your single core processor.
You may even find that the 10.04 based CD will not run, or not install

You can upgrade to the latest version of Linuxcnc, that is not affected.

Try running from the CD first off, if that seems OK then install it

Why isn't LinuxCNC working with propietary drivers? I mean it should...

Why isn't LinuxCNC working with propietary drivers? I mean it should...

Because the makers of video cards, who write these drivers, have no interest in realtime computing or computer latency, their interests lie mainly with gaming and particulary the windoze gaming market.

The code in these drivers is not public, so even if anyone felt like rewriting the openGL libraries etc just to suit the likes of nvidia, they couldn't.

regards

Take a look at the Matrox brand.
I recall that years ago, they specialized in the 2D graphics field while everybody else was jumping up and down for accelerated 3D / OpenGL graphic cards. I think it made for quicker rendering in AutoCAD and similar programs.

Later -

>>> Sterl