[CentOS] Dell Dimension 2400 W/Intel 845-G Video

Mon Oct 6 02:47:42 UTC 2014
Mark LaPierre <marklapier at gmail.com>

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?

-- 
    _
   °v°
  /(_)\
   ^ ^  Mark LaPierre
Registered Linux user No #267004
https://linuxcounter.net/
****