You wrote (in your message from Fri 19)
 > I'm currently getting ready to buy a new vlb video card to replace my ISA 
 > card that spends too much time jumpscrolling text in tall xterms.
 > (it screams as long as there's only about 5 lines of text showing :) ) 
 > 
 > are there any in particular I should avoid?

Have a look at http://www.xfree86.org for details.

In short:

1. avoid Matrox boards: they are not supported by XFree86 and probably
   never will
2. The Diamond SpeedStar 24 (and possibly recent SpeedStar+) boards
   are NOT supported, even though they use the ET4000.  The Stealth 32
   which uses the ET4000/W32p is also not fully supported.  The Weitek
   9100 and 9130 chipsets are not supported (these are used on the
   Diamond Viper Pro and Viper SE boards).  Most other Diamond boards
   will work with this release of XFree86.  Diamond is now actively
   supporting The XFree86 Project, Inc.
3. Trident TGUI9xxx based board (which are often cheap and quite
   common) support is not yet ready. It's been actively developped
   though. (The current beta XFree86 works with some board)
4. 3.1.2 has some problems with some Mach64 cards. There is progress
   on thes aspects in the 3.1.2B beta release too and work in progress
   for future releases.

And, if you have some $ to spend, you may consider buying Xinside's
server which does a better job than XFree86 in supporting high end
accelerated boards.


					Matthieu