[vtkusers] Fix for disappearing images on IBM ThinkpadA31p/ATI Mobility FireGL 7800 chip

[Maynard Brandsma]

Hello:
I'm sending this in hopes of saving people running VTK  4.2 on notebooks 
with ATI Mobility FireGL 7800 graphics chips (like my IBM Thinkpad 
A31p)  some grief.  The OS is Windows 2000.

I had an image of an assembly of Polydata actors that disappeared along 
with its bounding box when I clicked in the render window with mouse button 
1 to rotate the image (a vtkCubeAxesActor object remained visible).  I'm a 
new VTK user and I thought something was wrong with the Tcl script I was 
using.  The problem was in the ATI driver.  Version 5.13.1.6067 was on my 
Thinkpad A31p.  The ATI web site says to go to the notebook vendor for 
updated drivers.  The IBM site only had drivers certified for selected 
applications.

The fix uses the Windows Update facility.  Right click on "My 
Computer".  Select "Properties".  Click on the "Hardware" tab.  Click on 
"Device Manager".   Double click on "Display Adapters"-- you should see 
"ATI MOBILITY FIRE GL 7800".  Right click on this and select 
"Properties".  Click on the "Driver" tab.  Check the "Driver date" and 
"Driver version" values.  The latest driver, which I obtained today is 
version 6.14.10.6392, dated 11/20/2003.  Updating the driver cured the 
disappearing image problem.  Update the driver by clicking on the "Update 
Driver" button.  Tell the update wizard to search for a suitable 
driver.  In list of optional search locations, uncheck everything except 
"Microsoft Windows Update" (make sure this last is checked).  Then follow 
the wizard's instructions (don't check the "other drivers" option when it 
appears).


Maynard Brandsma
Brandsma Engineering
Mailing address:  P.O. Box 378, Durango CO 81302
Street address:  102 E. Eighth Street, Suite 203, Durango, CO 81301
Telephone/Fax: 970.259.3487
E-mail: BrandsmaMG at compuserve.com