X locks up computer on old Gateway laptopGte

Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: X locks up computer on old Gateway laptopGte
started by: CptDondo

Posted by CptDondo on May 19 2007,18:35

I have an old (really old) Gateway Liberty laptop. It's about a 1995 vintage laptop.

I've installed DSL on it but I can't get X started. With Xfbdev I get /dev/fb0 not found (or similar error) and with Xvesa the screen goes black and the machine becomes non-responsive.

I know X works as I've had OpenBSD running X on that box in the past.

I can't quite figure out where X is configured; the xorg.conf or XFree86.config-4 file isn't there. Also X doesn't seem to keep a log file so I can't tell where it's locking up.

The video chipset is Chips and Technologies 65545 VGA 640x480 and (I think) 16 bits.

Anyone have any suggestions?

How do I enable verbose logging for X startup?

Thanks,

--Yan

Posted by Juanito on May 19 2007,19:11

If you enter the boot code "dsl 2" at the DSL spalsh screen, DSL will boot to terminal mode - you can then type xsetup.sh and configure DSL for your graphics.

Posted by CptDondo on May 20 2007,00:18

I tried that. I tried both fb and vesa in 640x480 resolutions; no joy.

I should have added that I can boot the system just fine into text mode; everything is there and AFAICT works. I've tried X, startx, Xfbdev, Xvesa from the command line; no joy. System either fails with a wrapper of some sort not found, or hangs on black screen.

What I really need is a log file or debug dump so I can tell where X is hanging.

Some googling and I've found that I most likely need the svga driver for that chipset; neither fb nor vesa will work.... How do I go about installing that?

--Yan

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 20 2007,02:37

DSL includes 2 tinyx servers from xf4.3 which are xvesa are xfbdev. You could also try the updated (4.6) versions that are available in mydsl/testing.
For logging this.. I suppose you could try to edit .xserverrc and redirect output to a text file.

If you want to use XF86config-4 you can use one of the XFree86.* extension in mydsl. Default log is /var/log/XFree86.0.log
If you want to use xorg, you'll have to get that from somewhere else... Default log is /var/log/xorg.0.log

For the svga driver, I think that's in XFree86 3.x - some instructions and download links are available in some forum threads.

Posted by CptDondo on May 20 2007,20:12

OK, success!

I found a copy of knoppix_svga and installed it, and set the bpp to 8.

Now I have a display!

Next, usability....