Red Hat installs gone bad

[imported_all_smiles]

I am trying to dual boot windows 98 and redhat I have an old Pentium I at 200 Mhz with 48MB of ram, got it for nothing and trying to get some use out it. The problem is that everytime I install redhat the screen shows up like it is magnified in the corner and blurred. It is kind of tough to describe my mouse pointer still shows up fine and is moveable. I started with red hat 9.0 didnt expect it to work and I experienced this problem as soon as the installation program tried to go to graphical mode. I figured no sweat this hardware is just to old and I kicked back to 7.3 I did a complete install without a problem and after rebooting the system when I hit the login screen I had the same problem. Did some research and the video card that I have a Trident Providia 9685 according to the redhat hardware compatibility search said that it is only compatible up to Redhat 7.2 so I then downloaded the iso's did an install of 7.2 and guess what the same problem. The monitor is a HP D3857A 1024 low emmissions. I also tried it with a AcerView 34T and I have gotten the same problem. The funny part is that the install of 7.3 when I did the monitor tests the image showed up fine but it wasnt until I rebooted that I had the problem. After that with my 7.2 install the problem showed up at the test phase of the install. I am not one to give up easy but I am running out of movies to watch while waiting for the iso's to download and the installs to complete. Any help here is appreciated.

Thanks

[imported_all_smiles]

I did some thinking and when I was asked about the amount of onboard RAM that the video card had on it I went with the default amount of 1 mb but I was thinking that maybe this could be the cause of the problem if the video card had less. I am going to try an install listing the minimal amount as I have not been able to determine from some research how much ram that this video card has on it. If anybody has any ideas where I can find more info on the video card or any other information it would be helpful.

Thanks,

[imported_all_smiles]

This system is being dual booted and I checked on 98 the other 0S no problems found the screen is just fine. I tried installing redhat with a minimal amount of video memory I think it was 256K and had the same problem with both monitors and I tried it with 4MB of video memory and same deal. I am guessing that the monitor video card combinations must just be fighting each other and with a little bit of luck I am going to get ahold of another video card and give that a try. Any other ideas? Working with dinosaurs here for hardware but what can I say I am ambitous and broke.

[imported_all_smiles]

Ok unable to get ahold of another graphics card so far from the same era as the system that I am using. Does anybody know where I can find a good utility that will tell me how much Video Memory my graphics card has? I need some help here!!!!!!!!!! Have already been googling and getting the run around I know that their has to be a ton of utilities out their for this, today the searching just isnt going well.

[groovicus]

Not sure about the video utility issue, but just looking at your ram and processor speed, I don't know how well that is going to work, unless you go exclusively with a command line interface (for RedHat). Not that I am any Linux expert, but it seems to me that Redhat is resource intensive... maybe not as much as XP, but IMHO thats gona put a strain on your system.

Sorry I can't help you with your video issue. :(

[imported_all_smiles]

Here (http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/?pagename=details&hid=3618) is a link showing that my processor which is an MMX is compatible through redhat 7.3. I have 48MB of ram which I cant vouch for as being enough because I havent run into anything on the redhat site giving an exact requirement but I would assume it should be enough as anything required above that will just result in a slow computer with alot of swap space. If you think this is a old system you should see what I am working with for my soon to be attempted open BSD firewall I have a choice between a old 486DX gateway that is probably over 10 years old or a HP that is a pentium at I think 133mhz. The HD has 212.2 MB of space and all of this falls within the requirements listed on the bsd wall page (http://www.bsdwall.org) . That my friend is why I love open source OS's!!

I have thought about just dual booting on my main system which is fairly new but I have done that in the past and it lead to a few small problems that I dont want to have to deal with. I have spent alot of time setting up this system and dont want to risk losing it even though I did use ghost to image it. I am also filling up the HD rapidly and am going to need a 2nd one soon.

As far as the problem at hand goes I still havent gotten ahold of another video card but I am working on that as well as another monitor to see if I can get it to work with that. If that doesnt work and if I cant find out how much Video Memory I have on my existing card then I think the plan will be to say forget it for a while and work on my BSD firewall.

[steve.milner]

You should be okay with RH9/Fedora

Once you have booted with gobbledook on the screen press CTL - ALT F1 and log in as root.

You need to configure the /etc/X11/XF86Config file

Read this article here :

http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/trident.4.html

For how to setup your trident card

Look for something like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "trident"

Make sure the driver is set to trident

If you don't know much about the XF86Config file type man XF86Config for basic details.

HTH
Steve

[imported_all_smiles]

Hey Thanks Steve I wont have a chance to try it till tomorrow night I will post my results but hopefully that will do it.

[steve.milner]

Originally posted here (http://www.AntiOnline.com/showthread.php?threadid=253598#post712316) by all_smiles
Hey Thanks Steve I wont have a chance to try it till tomorrow night I will post my results but hopefully that will do it.
Any Joy?

Steve

[Shrekkie]

code:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "trident"

If that doesn't work try this one,

Driver "vesa"

Good old vesa works every time imo....

Greetz,

[imported_all_smiles]

Still tinkering I am on the right track but want to try and figure it out myself before I askd for help again and didnt have as much of a chance last night to work on it as I had wanted to. Half the trouble is just getting use to the command line interface my only in depth experience with this has been with cisco routers and the cisco ios and bash are more than just a little different.

[imported_all_smiles]

Ok tried both drivers the picture is clearer but still a little distorted but things are still zoomed way in so that I am only look at maybe 1/10 of the screen area that I am supposed to see and everything is really big. Super probe said that I have 1024k of video memory which is what the XF86Config file is set to. How I have been changing the Config file is using pico not sure if this is the best way but it was the best method I found on google and I dont have the experience to know another way. I also tried this config with both of the monitors and I have been manually changing the Horizontal and vertical sync using the information found here (http://cvs.mandrakesoft.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/soft/ldetect-lst/lst/MonitorsDB?rev=1.20) .

The results with both of the monitors has been the same.

Edit:
I also just tried Xconfigurator and at the PCI probe it said:

PCI Entry: TGUI 9660/968x/968x
X Server: XF86_SVGA
XFree4 driver: (default)

after answering Ok I get the response:

Server doesnt exist, cant continue
tried to use ../../usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA

Now my card is a Providia 9685 so I dont know if the PCI entry is right but doing some poking around on the redhat site i found this (http://www.redhat.com/support/resources/howto/XFree86-upgrade/XFree86-upgrade-2.html#ss2.30). Not quite sure what the significance is here but something doesnt seem right.

Also just to clarify I installed 7.2 because the video card is compatible according to redhat and when I tried to install 9.0 I couldnt make it through the installation without problems. I thought that this would simplify things and once I get a version installed I can just image the drive and try an upgrade.

[imported_all_smiles]

any more ideas?? I do accept gut feeling, superstition and any type of similar experience as valid input here because I dont have a clue.

[imported_all_smiles]

Well I tried many many things and while according to all of the information that I have found the configuration that I have should have worked I finally just gave up added a 2nd hard drive to my good system and 20 minutes later I am now on a working redhat system. The beauty of new quality hardware!!! If only I could afford more.