On 10/05/14 22:47, Mark LaPierre wrote:
> Hey Y'all,
>
> I've been Googeling and experimenting for two days trying to find a way
> to deal with the Intel 845-G video chipset in this Dell Dimension 2400.
> First, it doesn't have a DVD drive so I have to install from a CD.
> When I try to boot into the Live CD I get a video error something like,
> Undefined video mode number: 317. It hangs at the splash screen.
>
> I was able to make a minimal install with the Minimal Install CD. I
> used yum to update and then install the desktop and X server. I managed
> to get it to bring up the desktop by adding nomodeset to the grub
> command line and by using the vesa driver but I can only get 640x480
> resolution and the image is offset on the screen to the left and down.
>
> I tried a netinstall. It was looking good but the video bug crashed
> that too.
>
> I just swapped out the CD drive with another known good drive. Still no
> joy. I wasn't expecting that to make a difference so I wasn't
> disappointed when it didn't.
>
> There's a lot a cruft on the internet about problems with the Intel
> 845-G chipset but no solutions that work for me. Does anyone know
> how to get an successful installation on this hardware?
>
First I want to thank all of you who have offered up proposed solutions.
I got the netinstall to work. Then used yum update to bring it up to
the latest and greatest. I worked with 6.5 but got nowhere there. Then
the 6.6 point release was ready so I did the yum update dance in hopes
that 6.6 would be more cooperative.
Today I've been googling, experimenting, and pretty much failing
miserably. The best I've managed to get is to set the boot command to
nomodeset, and the xorg.conf "Device" driver to vesa. I got 640x480
resolution with the image offset to the left and down. Pretty much
unusable. No improvement from my previous best effort documented above.
I am able to open System/Preferences/Display where I could select a
different resolution if I could see and reach the [Apply] button. That
really doesn't matter since the only resolution available on the pull
down is 640x480.
I can't get the intel driver to yield a screen at all.
I experimented with many VGA=NNN modes in combination with the vesa
driver. No joy there. Not even the GDM screen comes up. The best I've
been able to get from the intel driver is a mouse pointer in the middle
of an otherwise black screen.
When the graphics come up I can check the Xorg.0.log where I can see
that the vesa driver says that resolutions including 1280x1024, 104x768,
and 800x600 are viable options. I can't get it to use any of them.
What think yee? Is there any hope of getting any resolution greater
than 640x480 out of this thing?
--
_
°v°
/(_)\
^ ^ Mark LaPierre
Registered Linux user No #267004
https://linuxcounter.net/
****