making progress, had to blacklist nouveau, install tons of stuff, now getting to this error here
https://photos.app.goo.gl/rsdyy8AmE4h1Sa2t7

here is installer log error, make errors, figures
https://photos.app.goo.gl/qWQfBzfBTiWpWVjs7

Stop with the help Vampirism every 10 minutes. Do a little research please.

A Gforce 6200 is in the NV40 family.
https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/CodeNames.html
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/legacy-gpu/

Nvidia dropped support for that years ago. Nouveau should work with it.

Or you may be able to use 304.xx with it, using an older version of xorg.
https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answ...ail/a_id/3142/

What is the output of
You also can't have nvidia and nouveau installed at the same time. Or blacklist one of them.

I already had blacklisted nouveau, or the installer could not have gotten as far as actually compiling the driver

ubuntu mate already has it compiled and in a repo, so that is the next plan install that.
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-insta...c-beaver-linux

your command shows nothing
debian-scott-478@debian-478:~$ lspci -k | grep -A 2 -E "(VGA|3D)"[/code]
debian-scott-478@debian-478:~$

this command works
debian-scott-478@debian-478:~$ lspci -nn | grep '\[03'
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation NV44A [GeForce 6200] [10de:0221] (rev a1)
debian-scott-478@debian-478:~$

I am ending this thread as a Debian failure on old hardware. And am moving on to Ubuntu Mate, so the drive is going to be wiped but I wont forget this. If I get Ubuntu mate working with the nvidia driver, I will post back how it works well or not.

I marked solved as a dont waste your time if you have a similar PC setup as it wont work.

working on ubuntu mate, and got the driver installed very easily using this PPA
Driver is 304.137
https://launchpad.net/~graphics-driv...ive/ubuntu/ppa

AND, I found a post here which may someday be of use is others want to install this driver on a different linux
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/nvid...18-04/16787/42
Hi!

I have a pc with an old Geforce 6800 card and I have managed to successfully install the 32bit Nvidia 304.137 driver for it on Lubuntu 18.04; all thanks to a community patch. Here is the procedure.

Install build tools
$ sudo apt install gcc make build-essential gcc-multilib dkms mesa-utils

Download driver from https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driv...x/123708/en-us 528

Download patch from https://adufray.com/nvidia-304.137-bionic-18.04.patch 789

Extract archive, place patch into extracted folder and apply patch
$ ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.137.run -x
$ cd ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.137
$ patch -p1 < nvidia-304.137-bionic-18.04.patch

Disable nouveau driver and reboot
$ sudo -i
# cat << END > /etc/modprobe.d/disable-nouveau.conf
blacklist nouveau
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist rivafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivatv
blacklist amd76_edac
options nouveau modeset=0
END
# update-initramfs -u
# reboot

Stop x-server
Logout
Bring up terminal with Ctrl-Alt-F1, login
$ sudo -i
# service lightdm stop
# init 3

Install NVidia driver
Ignore the first warning about preinstall failing, agree to driver recompilation on kernel update and to configuration files update. Reboot.
# ./nvidia-installer
# reboot

Driver should be working now. Check with the following:
$ lshw -c video 2>&1 | grep driver
Should output"configuration: driver=nvidia"

There is one small problem though. Apparently Nvidia driver installs it’s own version of libvdpau, which does not work with mplayer. That’s why we need to forcefully reinstall libvdpau (and possibly need to do this on kernel update, because driver will recompile and reinstall it’s own, non-functioning version for this library?)
$ sudo apt --reinstall install libvdpau1

References: (placed in separate post because new users are allowed to only 2 links per post)
Compiling nVidia 304.137 on Ubuntu 18.04: https://adufray.com/blog/2018/06/02/...-127-on-bionic 386
How to install NVIDIA.run?: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1492...all-nvidia-run 254

@sdowney717 -- congrats on getting it going.

Graphical Display Managers, like below,
• Entrance — Enlightenment display manager.
• GDM — GNOME display manager.
• LightDM — Cross-desktop display manager, can use various front-ends written in any toolkit.
• LXDM — LXDE display manager. Can be used independent of the LXDE desktop environment.
• SDDM — QML-based display manager and successor to KDM; recommended for Plasma and LXQt.
• XDM — X display manager with support for XDM
need to be stopped to enter a noX environment prior to installing nVidia drivers.

See https://www.linuxfordevices.com/tuto...services-linux

Welcome to Debian per se on old PCs. Simpler Debian distros like MX make such much easier.

I thought it was working, but it failed. it did compile and say was installed ok, wrote the new xorg and everything, but upon rebooting it showed terrible corruption on the icons, so I dont know if it is 32 bit issue... I jumped the gun. Card works fine in windows, so I dont think its a hardware issue. But I tried.

I did find out on the MXlinux forum 18.1 and 18.3 supposedly have support for the nvidia driver 304.137, so someday will try their iso.

I even tried it on ubuntu versions 16.04, 16.10, 17.04...which claims to really support this driver.