11.04 doesn't like the older cards apparently, poor ATI support possibly.
I have a system with an x1950, 11.04 will boot but the desktop will not display. If I remove the card and use the onboard graphics, nvidia, 11.04 desktop works fine.
You could try checking what version of fglrx is installed.
dpkg --get-selections | grep fglrx
then, after an apt-get update
Alternatively you could burn to a flash stick from a running system (offending card removed), then install the drivers and sdk you want.
You may need to follow Kano's guide to get up to speed.
Thank you for the assistance. I had the machine working before I installed the 5870 using the xforcevesa command. Now, that I added the 5870 the same boot parameter will not work and gives me the MSI-x error.
I have two machines in the garage with 4x5870s in them that work fine with 11.04. I used a combination of kano's guide with a couple changes that work just fine so it kind of has me confused. I have the flash drive I originally made for my desktop computer. I used it to boot one of the machines in the garage for the first time and started going through kano's guide with it. I made a mistake somewhere in his guide and out of frustration decided to start over on a new flash drive. The original one after using it in the garage computer will no longer work with my desktop. The menus look very different, gives me all sorts of errors, and shuts off.
At this point I've thought about:
1. sudo apt-get update, but I don't want to save the update to my SSD, but rather the flash drive. How would I target that as the destination when booting from the live cd?
2. Create flash drive from one of the garage machines and see if it'll work. If so I can just go through my normal installation process.
3. Remove 5870, create live cd with vforcevesa, reinstall 5870, and create a new fglrx.
I know there just has to be a simpler way of doing it though.