I could use some much needed help with getting anything newer than Xubuntu 12.04 LTS up and running on this piece of crap! The Radeon 9200 works just fine under 12.04 (probably based on Debian 7.11 which doesn’t surprise me as that works too), but 14.04 and 16.04 is completely broken after install, …

Maybe try installing 12.04, then upgrading your 12.04 install to 14.04 and then to 16.04.