On February 8, 2008 my computer froze up on me, and after rebooting it I noticed a bunch of random red and blue dots on the display. The following day it locked up again, and on rebooting I saw red and blue blinking dots in text mode during the BIOS POST sequence. At that point I knew it couldn't be a software problem, so I contacted ATI technical support to see if there was a way to test the video RAM on my Radeon X1900 XT graphics card.

Their response was "The Linux drivers available from ATI are provide are 'as is'."!

I sent a message back once more reiterating the fact that the corruption was occurring in text mode. Their second response was practically the same as the first: "AMD/ATI currently has no support for linux based systems. The drivers are posted online for complimentary reasons."

For my third message I sent them photos of my screen during the POST sequence. Their final reply was a boilerplate message which said, in essence:

• Visit our KNOWLEGDE base to find answers to your questions prior to requesting warranty service. (By the way, if you go to http://www.amd-firefly.com/firefly2007/fireflyclient.jsp there is a link to KB article 737-21241 titled "Display Corruption before the Windows Logo Screen and During Post". If you follow this link, you get a page reading "No Results Found - 21241". AMD does not provide any links for reporting problems with their knowledge base.)
• ATI Technologies recommends that you have the latest drivers to optimize the performance of your product. (Which incidentally they don't actually support, and are irrelevant in my case)
• Display corruption and random system hangs DO NOT require warranty service.

I can't believe how obtuse these people are. It's like I'm talking to a machine with pre-programmed responses, or to a luser who has never put together his own computer.

I wonder if nVidia's technical support department is more competent?