Comment 28 for bug 86072

elmo, I've seen several reports and patches upstream about ES1000 issues, but it's not clear which matches this particular case. Can you attach the following to help narrow down which bug we're seeing?

 1. /var/log/Xorg.0.log and /var/log/gdm/\:0.log after a failure
 2. `lspci -nn`
 3. `sudo ddcprobe`

Also, if possible could you test booting the hardware with either a Feisty CD or an early Tribe CD (like Tribe 4 or before). If it turns out that it works in this case, then my best guess is that you're seeing this bug rather than what gian's seeing:

 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12490 - special case needed for single crtc chips with the -ati 6.7.x series, including 6.7.194.

I ruled out the following as either particular to unrelated hardware or having different symptoms, but am including them here for curiosity's sake:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12543 - DMX stretching on Dell servers
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5766 - screen corruption at high resolutions
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11300 - Sun server KVM limits res to 1024x768