> Hi all, > My friend below, who I told about a year and a half ago to switch to > Linux, is having trouble as you can see. Does anyone have suggestions? Sure. Do the following: 0) Make sure you know what kind of video card you have and that it's supported by XFree86. Make sure you have the right X server installed (the one which supports that video card). X -showconfig will tell you the drivers available in your X server. 1) Make a backup copy of the /etc/X11/XF86Config file. You will be making lots of changes to this file so it would be nice to have the original one around in case it becomes unusable. 2) In the XF86Config file, comment out (#) or delete all the ModeLines with resolutions that you will never use. Who uses 320x200 anyway? That way, you'll have only the resolutions you want, so that when you find one that works it will be at a resolution you want. 3) In the XF886Config file, make sure the vertical refresh rate of the monitor is something reasonable. Don't let it try to tell you that 60 is a reasonable number; instead, put a range like 40-100 if you have a high-performance monitor. Cheaper monitors may have a maximum of 72Hz refresh rate. The more of a range on refresh rate, the more ModeLines there are that will work with it. 4) In the XF86Config file, make sure the HorizSync value is something reasonable. 31.5KHz used to be a lot; nowadays your monitor might be able to do 75KHz on the horizontal sync. Be a bit careful or conservative here because you CAN smoke (damage) your monitor if your video card generates frequencies that the monitor can't handle. That may only be true of older, fixed-frequency monitors but it has happened. 5) In the XF86Config file, comment out or delete all the sections under "Screens" in which the driver is vga, mono, etc. If you are using the XF86_SVGA server, delete or comment out all the sections that do not use the Driver "svga". If your X server supports your card directly (i.e., an S3 accelerated card and you're using XF86_S3 then delete all the sections that aren't Driver "accel" . 6) In the XF86Config file, change/edit the "Screen" section so that the only "subsection display" that's present is the one that has the color depth, resolution, etc. that you want. All of the above steps are useful because they cut your troubleshooting time way down. Now comes the real troubleshooting. Try to start X. Type "X" and see what happens. If it starts and looks good, then type CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to kill it and then proceed normally. If starts but looks wrong, then you need to comment out more ModeLines until you get one that looks good or else until the X server won't start. If it locks up your computer, then reboot. If the X server won't start but instead just says "no valid modes found" or something like that, then you can figure out what's going on by typing the following at the sh/bash shell prompt: rm /tmp/xout ; X -probeonly 1>>/tmp/xout 2>>/tmp/xout If you use csh/tcsh then you should encapsulate the above command in a sh -c "stuff" to force the command to be run by sh/bash. I forget how to send stdout and stderr to the same file in append mode from csh, so I always just use bash. Anyway, examine the /tmp/xout file and see what it doesn't like. This may take some figuring out, and you can feel free to post the output to the list or e-mail it to me and I may be able to help. Basically though what you're looking for is the dot-clock number to use with a given modeline to make it work. Here's a sample modeline: Modeline "1152x866" 77 1152 1184 1328 1448 866 867 869 891 ^^1^ ^^^^^^^^^^2^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^3^^^^^^^ 1. dot-clock 2. Htimings 3. Vtimings If, for instance, your X server won't start because it doesn't like the dot-clock, I think it will tell you the dot-clock it wants to use. Edit the XF86Config file and insert the dot-clock it wanted on the appropriate ModeLine and try it again. Also, once you have a resolution/color depth that works for you, it might not be centered in your screen, or there might be a lot of black-space around the edges of the monitor, or some other reason you might want to tweak the X display. As you may know, you can edit the horizontal timings and vertical timings in the ModeLine to customize the display. The horizontal timing numbers must all be divisible by 8. Once you get the X server working, you can use the 'xvidtune' program to generate the new timing numbers for you, although I don't know how to get xvidtune to increase the ranges on the sliders beyond what it gets when it starts up. To run xvidtune on a blank display, do the following at the sh/bash prompt: 1) X -ac & 2) DISPLAY=:0;export DISPLAY 3) xvidtune and then do ALT-F7 to go to the X11 display. As I say xvidtune will give you the new timing numbers and you can even iterate through xvidtune if you want, I think. -- Jim Ockers (ockers@ockers.net) Ask me about Linux! Contact info: please see http://www.ockers.net/ Fight Spam! Join CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) at http://www.cauce.org/ .