For you guys with older hardware/drivers, have you tried turning on CONFIG_UNUSED_SYMBOLS and recompiling the kernel to see if its helps? (Kernel hacking -> Enable unused/obsolete exported symbols).
I use it to support vmware server 1.x and ati flgrx drivers (with 2.6.26 or later kernels). IIRC my home machine is an IGP 440 MX running 2.6.28 (not sure of driver version off the top of my head, maybe masked to ?97?) but its working fine.
