Comment 20 for bug 86072

After rebuilding the 'xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.7.194-2.fc8' driver package on an otherwise up to date 'Fedora rawhide' system, the X server starts up correctly which means that the main issue has gone away. However, the X server now ignores the 1400x1050 mode entry in xorg.xonf and defaults to 1280x1024 at 85Hz which it didn't do before. After removing the 1400x1050 mode entry from xorg.conf, the X server still defaults to 1280x1024 at 85Hz but at least now, the GNOME display preferences allow the user to change the resolution to 1600x1200 at 75 Hz whereas before, only lower resolutions were present. However, the 1400x1050 mode has disappeared completely. It has to be added though that the Fedora X server has been patched, so this observation might not apply to upstream Xorg.
Note that the monitor device is an HP A4576A 21" CRT for which 1400x1050 is the natural resolution both in terms of DPI and aspect ratio (4/3).
When switching to a virtual console, the monitor powers off. It is still possible to switch back to vt7 but then, the X server simply restarts. It is also possible to reboot the system via ctrl-alt-del. It seems that switching to a virtual console makes the X server crash as already reported in comment #11. The relevant entries in Xorg.0.log related to the crash are:

(II) AIGLX: Suspending AIGLX clients for VT switch
disable montype: 1
(II) RADEON(0): RADEONRestoreMemMapRegisters() :
(II) RADEON(0): MC_FB_LOCATION : 0xffff0000
(II) RADEON(0): MC_AGP_LOCATION : 0x003fffc0
finished PLL1

Backtrace:
0: /usr/bin/X(xf86SigHandler+0x81) [0x80cdf21]
1: [0x12d420]
2: /lib/libc.so.6 [0x3532a8]
3: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//radeon_drv.so(RADEONLeaveVT+0x65) [0x505315]
4: /usr/lib/xorg/modules//libxaa.so [0x5bacc7]
5: /usr/bin/X [0x80b34cd]
6: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions//libglx.so [0x49df8f]
7: /usr/bin/X(xf86Wakeup+0x289) [0x80cf509]
8: /usr/bin/X(WakeupHandler+0x59) [0x808c859]
9: /usr/bin/X(WaitForSomething+0x1ae) [0x81b60ae]
10: /usr/bin/X(Dispatch+0x8d) [0x808864d]
11: /usr/bin/X(main+0x495) [0x80704a5]
12: /lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0) [0x214320]
13: /usr/bin/X(FontFileCompleteXLFD+0x1f1) [0x806f791]

Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11. Server aborting

(II) AIGLX: Suspending AIGLX clients for VT switch
disable montype: 1
(II) RADEON(0): RADEONRestoreMemMapRegisters() :
(II) RADEON(0): MC_FB_LOCATION : 0xffff0000
(II) RADEON(0): MC_AGP_LOCATION : 0x003fffc0
finished PLL1