(Perhaps this thread would better belong on port-i386?  By ``6x86'', I
assume that you mean an i386, perhaps by the ``6'', you mean that it's
post-Pentium?  If so, I'm surprised if it only has ISA slots.)

Possibly depending on the verbosity of your kernel's hardware probes,
/sbin/dmesg might tell you some info.  (Mine correctly reports ``S3
ViRGE/DX'' on the PCI bus; that's really the chipset, I think, the actual
make/model is an STB Nitro 3D.  I don't know how much can be probed with
an ISA card...)

Looking at the card may help some.  Chipset, and perhaps make/model, might
be found out.  But that's probably not enough to get X running as well as
it should.  (I _assume_ that you want to run X.  If you are happy with a
plain text console on an i386 PC, then you don't really need to know much
of anything about your video card.)

I never used the XFree86 3.3.x superprobe program.  I once needed to know
some info about my card---info which I didn't have---though I knew the
basic model/make of the card.  The XFree86 docs either implied that it was
dangerous, or useless, to run superprobe in my situation...or maybe I
tried it and found that it told me nothing of value?  It's been too many
years.  The upshot is that superprobe may not tell you anything.  If it is
helpful, then great.  If it isn't, then read on...


What I _did_ find quite accurate was XFRee86 4.0's autoconfiguration
feature.  (One of the XFree86 4.0 binaries has a ``-configure'' option.)  
This option nailed down pretty complete info on my video card (_and_ also
correctly identified my monitor).  The only problem with the
autoconfiguration, as I recall, is that they didn't pick up on NetBSD's
wsmouse(4) mouse abstraction.  Other than that, it worked like a charm.  
I would assume that it would likewise be able to identify your card with
good accuracy.

(I know that XFree86 4.x got my card pegged because by the time that 4.x
was available, I'd long since found out most/all of the details about my
card.  4.x's autoconfigure did a good job.)

(Note: NetBSD ships with XFree86 3.3.6, at present.  The XFree86
autoconfiguration (``-configure'') feature is part of XFree86 4.x.  4.x is
available for NetBSD last I checked from http://www.xfree86.org if you
want to go get it for use under NetBSD.  Due to small wrinkles here and
there (and no real benefits for me), I switched back to XFree86 3.3.6 on
my own machine.  But if I wanted to identify an unknown video card, I'd
probably go get the most recent XFree86 4.x again.)


Short of it: Since identifying your video card is important to setting up
an X server, read the docs for configuring X.  Those docs should help you
quite a bit.

Good luck.


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about." --rauch@eecs.ukans.edu