[Sheflug] Re: SuSE 7.0 liveeval

[Richard <nospam [at] sheflug.co.uk>]

Hello

Steve Tickle wrote:

> >I tried SUSE 7 as well and gave up. My computer will boot from the CD but
> >SUSE totally failed to recognise my video card and I got lost completely
> >trying to manually configure it. So, for the time being I dropped back to
> >Mandrake 7.2. The computers a P266 with bags of hard drive and RAM and the
> >video card in question is a PCI S3 virge card.
> 
> Have you had a look at http://www.suse.com/us/support/xsuse/? Maybe it's
> what you're looking for

Speaking as someone who has configured lots of S3 cards to work with
all sorts of grotty monitors that really belonged in a skip I can say
that it's the classic S3 card/monitor mismatch.

What happens here is that the hopeful user to be comes along and
assumes that the hardware manufacturers have a clue about anything. 
Best to get rid of that idea right away.  Only Microsoft think that
way. 

I eventually arrived at a situation where I completely ignored SaX
when it came to S3 cards.  XF86config is just as bad if you don't
understand the command line.  I used XF86Setup which is a freely
downloadable setup utility program.  With this you have to put the
exact details of your monitor and card into the setup program to get
things to work.  Once it's done the right way then it'll work first
time around.

I usually begin by taking the computer apart so that I can write down
the number on the graphics card.  That way you won't lose a monitor or
see smoke anywhere in the room.  XF86Setup will need the number that's
on the card.

If it still doesn't work after this then you have a monitor and
graphics card combination that will never work.  If I get to this
point then I change the graphics card.

Hope this helps.

-- 
Richard

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