Yet another Newbie that needs help

[markvdw]

I'm trying to get red hat 7.0 running on a old cyrix 200mhz, 48 mb, 2g drive, computer. It goes through the install fine initially, and then after configuring the video card(its an s3 virge/dx), it goes to a black screen. Nothing else happens. Any ideas? Should I try another flavor. I was thinking of Mandrake. Is this computer too old?

I used a lot of unix in college, and wanted to refresh some of the things I learned. An help will be greatly appreciated. http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

[CMonster]

You know, while the older S3 video cards are supposed to be supported, I had trouble with some of them too.


I guess your install would would only go in text mode and at the end, when you configure X it is not returning from the test - is that correct? (I just discovered that I cannot find my RH7 manual)


Perhaps you can install without configuring X and then configure it after by using xf86config - and try a whole bunch of generic S3 vid cards and resolutions:


To the best of my recollection:


$cd /usr/X11R6/bin


$xf86config


Instructions should be pretty straight forward


Personally -I would probably just go out and find a cheap video card upgrade that was known to be Linux friendly


------------------
CMonster says, "You can't choose the right OS if you don't have a choice."

[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 06 January 2001).]

[Mikenell]

Its definitly not too old, some people here run linux on older machines than that just fine, btw, does red hat 7 ask if you want to probe for video card type? IF it does try selecting no and there may be a change to select the card from a list which might work.
Mikenell

[markvdw]

Well I switched out the internals. Now it is running on a amd k6-2 450, 64 mb of ram, and a number 9 video card. I had these parts laying around, and decided to make my linux quest a bit more serious. Unfortunately, I'm still running into trouble. I tried red hat 6.2 and it hung, turbolinux just restarts constantly. So I tried red hat 7.0 one last time in expert installation mode. It almost worked! http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif The screen was half garbage, but I was able to make out the installation prompts. Then when it came to installing the packages it froze after half had been installed. I was about to give the whole linux thing up. Overnight, I managed to download the inst cd iso of Drake 7. Do you think I will have better luck with it? Or are the last three linux installation failures a sign of things to come? http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/frown.gif

If I try the text mode, how do I install the x-windows later? Perhaps I should just buy and el cheapo video card.

[hndpaul]

If you can, do the install in text mode and run xf86config afterwards. If that still fails, and you can afford it, try and get hold of an ATI XPert98 or similar- they work for me on every distro I've tried thus far!

Paul, UK

[aaron]

Does Redhat 7.0 default to X4.0? If so that might be a problem. I know that Xf86 4.0 doesn't play well with some older cards.

[markvdw]

Ok, I have a burned iso of mandrake 7.2, and I dug up an old stb lightspeed graphix card. One more try. Any pointers or tips? http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif I thank you all for the suggestions. If this fails, I will have to try to install text mode and configure the video later. The idea of doing that though, sounds intimidating. But then I guess that is how one learns. Again thanks, and any tips will continue to be appreciated.

[DemonKnight]

I instaled mandrake 7.2 on my cyrix PR-233 with 96 megs of ram and a 4 gig drive with a verge s3-dx vidcard and if instaled every thing fine and then after that when it would come up with OS manager (grub or lilo I'm not sure) I have to boot linux-nonfsb cause just "linux" does what you said, black screen nothing else, its like my computer goes into suspend mode. you might want to watch for that.

[FoBoT]

that sucks!

you basically changed out everything and had another failed install, wow

that blows

http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/frown.gif

hang in there are keep trying http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

[markvdw]

Well I give up.

I read as many FM's as I could find. I even bought 3 books. I looked up all the possible fixes. Made all the recommended changes to my bio settings, Tried 3 different video cards, Tried installing 4 different Linux Distros(both text, graphical, expert), and in the end...nothing. I wasted a whole week, and got nowhere. All I want is a freakin workable linux box, so I can learn it and possibly program through it. This was supposed to be fun. I give up. I know Linux isn't easy, but this is too much for me. I figured it would be more hardware compatible. In some of the distros I tried, it would list my stb lightspeed as a choice, it would list my optiquest 51 as a choice, and still my x-graphical windows wouldn't work, and upon rebooting it would either crash, or say:

Kernel Panic: swap not syncing.

My final hardware config:
FIC 2013 w/ AMD K6-2 450
Maxtor 6gb drive
stb lightspeed 128
no sound card
no network card
ps/2 mouse
us keyboard

Every time I installed I formatted the whole drive, and let the installation do an auto-partition(I wouldn't have a clue as to what the ideal partition setup would be). No other OS's installed with it. It used to have w2k on the 6gb drive, but it was formatted before putting this thing together.

Anymore ideas are welcome, but for now I'll play with my other box which is wy2k(I know I know, but it works and it didn't take me a week to install). http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/frown.gif

[sycofly]

im getting the same results mate...
this RH 7.0 is killing me.. but i have the time to mess with it.. best of luck markvdw you junior grasshopper you.. http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

ps. shouldnt i see my eth1 in #!/bin/sh ...?

[This message has been edited by sycofly (edited 11 January 2001).]

[markvdw]

Well I finally found a *nix distro that works. Solaris for Intel. It isn't exactly Linux, but it looks fun to learn and provides a great programming environment. Thanks for all the help guy. Hopefully, down the road, I can give Linux a try. If anyone knows any good solaris site, let me know. I'd love to read as much about configuring it and utilizing it well. What's the coolest of all is that Solaris is what I used in school, so I am pretty familiar with the software environment. Thanks again.