Blank Screen

NickR7 · October 27, 2011, 1:49am

Hello I just installed suse 11.4. After the loading screen (with the picture of the lizard and the “progress bar”), the screen goes blank, except that I CAN STILL SEE THE MOUSE CURSOR AND MOVE IT AROUND.

I can still use the system by doing alt-f1 and using the terminal at this point.

I can give the boot option in grub “nomodeset” and it will work but then I have ****** graphics with 16 colors.

The video device according to lspci appears to be an intel 82845G

How do I fix this?

martin_helm · October 27, 2011, 3:03am

I think you are a bit lost with that chip (but I am no expert)
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/hardware/445733-have-spent-months-trying-get-intel-82845g-graphics-work.html
and this was with 11.3.
If that is not a notebook plug in a different graphics card.
But maybe some of the real graphics card gurus have an idea.

NickR7 · October 27, 2011, 8:07pm

Yeah I decided to steal a pci graphics card from some old computer that was sitting around and reinstall linux with that.

It a ridiculous amount of effort to do simple things in linux like just change the desktop resolution you know?

martin_helm · October 27, 2011, 8:26pm

NickR7 wrote:

>
> Yeah I decided to steal a pci graphics card from some old computer that
> was sitting around and reinstall linux with that.
>
> It a ridiculous amount of effort to do simple things in linux like just
> change the desktop resolution you know?
>
You know that this graphics chip is so deprecated that you cannot have a
working driver for it with modern operating systems (including all modern ms
windows like vista and win 7), intel long ago deprecated this chip and
driver development for it?

Why do you expect a modern linux to work with it?
You have of course several options:

You install a conservative linux distribution which still has the driver
(I think I have seen that mepis 8 still works with it).
You use a completely outdated ms windows version like windows xp which
still has drivers for it.
You can try intellegacy driver in 11.4 instead of the intel driver (but I
think to remeber that this will not work, I can be wrong).
You replace it with a supported piece of hardware (what you obviously try
to do now).

NickR7 · October 27, 2011, 9:35pm

OK so that didn’t work. It freezes at “Creating device nodes with udev”. Booting to failsafe gives graphics but scrolling in a browser is unbearably slow.

This video card is even older (about 1997) I still don’t see why linux shouldn’t work older hardware. The first page of the suse install should be a shortlist of supported graphics devices.

All I want to do is turn this pentium 4 box into something I can get on the internet with (probably something that won’t work with older versions of linux). Its too bad this is something that requires 20-40 hours of work.

martin_helm · October 27, 2011, 9:45pm

Try a distro which is specialiced on old hardware (that does not mean that
the distro is old).
I had good experience with antix, debian, mepis. Other solutions I did not
test are puppy for example.

http://tinyurl.com/3x4lwr7
Distrowatch search for distros specialized on old hardware

martin_helm · October 27, 2011, 9:52pm

NickR7 wrote:

> The first page of the suse install
> should be a shortlist of supported graphics devices.
>
Just to answer that
http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Hardware
Hardware Comaptibility List based on user experience (there is no other way
for free software)

> This video card is even older (about 1997) I still don’t see why linux
> shouldn’t work older hardware.
Because obviously no developer wastes his/her free unpaid time in porting
old drivers for old hardware to new versions of the kernel and xorg or are
you willing to pay one of them for that and test it since I guess none of
them will have this hardware for testing?

Alternative: Learn to pragram and port it yourself and make packages for it
available for the major linux distros (no this is not a joke and it is no
offense, this is how it works).

malcolmlewis · October 27, 2011, 10:12pm

Hi
I have an old Pentium III with 256MB of ram running 11.4 and uwm for a
window manager just as a test, built in 2001 with intel onboard
graphics.
I also have a DELL P4 HT 2.8GHz machine with a Nvidia FX5200
running hooked into the TV at the moment for out Son to play Gcompris
with. It has 1GB of RAM though and runs GNOME 2.x with desktop effects
fine.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.4 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.37.6-0.7-desktop
up 3 days 6:00, 6 users, load average: 0.05, 0.15, 0.19
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - Driver Version: 285.05.09

martin_helm · October 27, 2011, 10:38pm

NickR7 wrote:

> OK so that didn’t work. It freezes at “Creating device nodes with
> udev”.
Cannot answer that.

> This video card is even older (about 1997)
Which one? Sometimes there is a better driver still available (for example
some old nvidia are still supported by proprietary drivers).
I had an old machine I gave away for simple usage (browsing, email, writing
letters) with a MX400 chip (PCI card not even AGP) which was supported by
the version 96.x of the driver which still is available for 11.4 (updated
this year from 11.3) and works well till today (512MB RAM, 80GB HD, 1100MHz
32 bit).

DenverD · October 28, 2011, 2:35pm

On 10/27/2011 08:16 PM, NickR7 wrote:
>
> It a ridiculous amount of effort to do simple things in linux like just
> change the desktop resolution you know?

no. linux is not the problem, instead it is your hardware choices.

for whatever hardware you choose, then it is up to you to load the right
software…its like buying a gasoline engine and trying to make it run
on whale oil…

–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Automobiles” of operating systems

JoergJaeger · October 28, 2011, 10:00pm

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:35:02 GMT
DenverD <DenverD@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

> On 10/27/2011 08:16 PM, NickR7 wrote:
> >
> > It a ridiculous amount of effort to do simple things in linux like
> > just change the desktop resolution you know?
>
> no. linux is not the problem, instead it is your hardware choices.
>
> for whatever hardware you choose, then it is up to you to load the
> right software…its like buying a gasoline engine and trying to
> make it run on whale oil…
>

Is this a CRT monitor? On LCD’s you don’t change resolutions, they have
a native resolution which should be chosen.