[seul-edu] Fw: Re: linux needs

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

On Sat, 20 May 2000, Dave Prentice wrote:

> - Six 486s are Compaq Deskpro's with built-in Qvision chip, which is
> not
> supported by Redhat. I'm trying to get some cheap video cards to put
> in
> them.
> - The other 5 are IBM Valuepoints with built-in S3 video and 1 meg of
> memory. They have 16meg RAM and about 400 meg hard drive space. (A
> Redhat
> 6.2 install with Xwindows and Gnome fills up the drive.) When I run
> Xconfigurator, the screen goes blank when it gets to the place of
> starting
> up Xwindows, and never comes back on.

I don't know about the Compaqs (can someone else help on this?), but on
the Valuepoints it's the 1MB of VRAM that is probably your problem. 
You could possibly get X up to 800x600x16bpp with that little video
memory, but nothing more than that.  Try starting with a very minimal
setting (640x480x8bpp) and see if that displays.  It won't be pretty,
but you should at least be able to check that it works.  Then try
upping the color depth to 16bpp.  If that works too, try upping the
resolution to 800x600.

And of course, if anyone has experience with this hardware that says my
advice is just plain wrong, please jump into the discussion!

-- 
Doug Loss            There's no trick to being a humorist
dloss@suscom.net     when you have the whole government
(570) 326-3987       working for you.
                        Will Rogers