Desperate plea for help with graphics problem

Eric Bradshaw ericbradshaw at computers4christians.org
Tue Jan 7 07:21:58 UTC 2014


I believe both versions (there were two models of the Dell Dimension 
3000) had Intel "integrated" graphics cards that were underpowered and 
horrible for Flash. If you are absolutely stuck with the graphics card 
you have, VLC is your best option (though you might also try Video 
Download Helper addon for Firefox and just download everything you want 
or need to see videowise first and play it from the hard drive with VLC).

If you can find a cheap (used) PCI graphics card, buy it. It would beat 
the Intel integrated one and give you a better shot at YouTube playback. 
Also if you have 512MB RAM, double it it you can. I don't think you can 
upgrade the hardware cost effectively anymore than doing those two things.

Easiest/quickest/prettiest way to get all your specs at once (incl. your 
current graphics card) is have the built-in lshw make a webpage for you. 
This is what I do anyway and I save it in the Documents folder for 
whoever ends up with the machine later.
Just go to Menu --> Accessories --> LXTerminal (or hit Ctrl+Alt+T) and 
type (or copy and paste):
sudo lshw -html > ~/Documents/specs.html
Hit Enter, provide your password, it'll pole your machine and within 
about 10 seconds lshw will find out everything you need or want to know 
about your hardware, including exactly what graphics card you have.
Now just go to the Documents folder and double-click "specs.html" and 
everything most anyone wants to know will be laid-out for you nice and 
pretty. You'll also be armed with any necessary info from which to pull 
Google search terms or things people in forums or mail lists may need to 
know to try to help you.
(If you don't need it all pretty, just run lshw and it'll be a big long 
list in LXTerminal - you don't even really need to be sudo)
If you only care about the graphics card, run lspci | grep VGA (the | is 
Shift+Backslash) and your current graphics card is the only output 
you'll get.

Eric



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