radeon questions

Dear silent alpha list,

I got X to work with my GeForce card and the nv driver.  It was 
functional, but underwhelming.  So, I got a PCI Radeon card via eBay.
Specifically, it's a Visiontek 9250.  The lspci output calls it an RV280 
9200 PRO.  So far, I can't get X to work.
Like nouveau for my nVidia card, the kernel DRM radeon module won't 
load.  Running modprobe radeon fails and says "Exec format error."  The 
dmesg output says something about "Relocation (type 4) overflow vs 
radeon_resume_kms."
Question 1:  Does the kernel module work with any alpha, or is it just mine?

Even worse, the xorg driver doesn't seem to work for me.  The Xorg 
website says the radeon driver works with the RV280/9250 chip.  The 
Xorg.0.log shows a long list of radeon models, but none of the 9200/9250 
models say PCI.  They say AGP or IGP.
I tried to copycat a google result pertaining to a ppc iMac and made a 
conf file to explicitly relate the radeon driver to the device by BusID, 
but that didn't help.
Question 2:  Does anyone have a PCI radeon 9250 working in their alpha?

Should I give up?  Any advice is welcome.

Oh, I don't expect my video performance to be very good in a 500MHz 
machine with a PCI card.  I was hoping there would be an advantage with 
drivers for ATI/AMD vs hostile nVidia.

Thanks,  DW