blank screen

[theagemaway]

I recently got knoppix, and put it on a regular CD-RW. I put it in the disk drive and restarted the computer. woohoo, everything's great. things are thinking, the BIOS is going at it, and then it asks me to tell it a resolution of sorts. so I tell it the one I think sounds best, which is like 80x60 I think. anyways, Knoppix thinks 80x60 is great, so he goes on and eventually I just get a black screen. so I figure it's just thinking for a minute, so I wait... and wait... and then I turned off the computer and let my little brother play back on Winblows.

any suggestions?

I have a windows ME (yeah I know, don't make fun of me.), 1.0 GHz (yeah I know, don't make fun of me lol) 256 MB SDRAM (yeah I know, don't make fun of me!). any other stats I can figure out (I don't remember off the top of my head cause I'm at school as I post this).

help please?
thank you in advance for any help

-theagemaway

[WaKa]

use cheat codes at the promp press (F2 or F3) or http://download.linuxtag.org/knoppix/knoppix-cheatcodes.txt
example (knoppix screen=1024x768)
use 800 X 600 or better when u find out your resolution window
also refresh rate can be add if needed


and get rid of that ME (snicker)
XP w/o service pack or another Linux like Gentoo will blow your hair back (ha ha just kidding)

[theagemaway]

okay thanks, we're progressing

I assume I'm supposed to put in the cheat code at the first screen, where it says "hit the return key to blah blah blah." and "press f2 or f3 for help or something"

so I typed in "boot: knoppix screen=800x600" but it says I have passed an undefined parameter or something. I dont remember if the word was parameter, but it was something undefined.

any help is still muchly appreciated.

PS: I'd like to get XP but 1) I only have 1 GHz processor, so it would be Uber slow, and 2) it eats RAM, and I only have 256 MB. so I basically have to buy a brand new computer. which is why I'm downloading open source linux stuff lol, cause its cheap :) but maybe when I get a new compy I'll have a successful dual-boot system

[WaKa]

Humm. What does ME say about
1) what kind of graphics card do u have
2) how many sizes u can use

take a shot at knoppix screen=640x480 knoppix vsync=60
also,
is there anything useful in your BIOS
and,
last resort is knoppix intit 1 (no graphics just prompt )
then lspci -v to find out your hardware and startx to try to start X windows

btw is your box in fairly good working order i.e. graphics card

[theagemaway]

okay so I tried:

knoppix screen=640x480 knoppix vsync=60

it said I passed an undefined mode number, which is what I couldnt remember in my last post.

then I tried knoppix init 1, I didn't even get to the lspci -v, because it told me about the mode # again.

it said "push return to see the modes or wait 30 secs"

here's the mode screen it showed me

VESA VGA
mode: COLSxROWS
0 0F00 80x25
1 0F01 80x50
2 0F02 80x47
3 0F03 80x28
4 0F04 80x30
5 0F05 80x34
6 0F06 80x60

and lets see what my video card is... he's probably the problem.
intel 82810E graphics controller? is that the right piece of info?
that was under Display Adaptors on the device manager on my comp

so youre saying my graphics card (more like a crappix card actually) could be incompatible with knoppix?

I'm gonna bring knoppix to school today and see what I can do with it on a school compy
it can't mess up the computers in any way unless I do something stupid, right?

[WaKa]

If you have time peruse this:

This may help
http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware-4.0/docs/linux-2.2.6/svga.txt


give this a shot


knoppix vga=788

[theagemaway]

nope that didnt work either, but I'm gonna see if I can decipher that link you gave me. I just glanced over it and I swear it's written in either chinese or martian. lol but thanks for the help

(still open for suggestions)

[WaKa]

The mode number is between 0 through 6 so use
knoppix vga=(any number between 0 & 6)

[theagemaway]

okay a bit w00t w00t here.

I'm at school using knoppix and it's working fine. I had to use "knoppix vga=0" but it all booted fine after that. I had some fun playing enigma for about half an hour. heh heh heh

well anyways, it still doesnt work correctly (on my home computer), but I think that's just because my home PC sucks. just a clarification: the last thing I see is "starting x windows" or something like that, and then it goes to a black screen. about a second afterwards, it goes to a blacker black screen. you know those kind? it basically looks like the monitor is off, but you can't turn it back on until you restart the computer.

more suggestions: welcome, and I'll be grateful for them.

[theagemaway]

I got an update...

I tried installing windows XP on a spare hard drive, and it came up with the same problem. I think it has to do with the onboard video not being good enough, or not being compatible with whatever the OS wants it to do.

[keess2]

Hi

I tried to boot from a freshly downloaded Knoppix-5 image on my laptop but when X is launched it presents a wite screen and that's it.
I did several attempts with various cheatcodes but none was helping me.

Then I booted up with

knoppix 2

which keeps Linux in textmode. Next I did

X -configure

this created a new //xorg.conf.new file.
I tried next

X -config //xorg.conf.new

and now X came up with a normal canvas. Last step was

cp //xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

init 5 brought up everything normal

This may help others

Kees

[keess2]

Hi

I tried to boot from a freshly downloaded Knoppix-5 image on my laptop but when X is launched it presents a wite screen and that's it.
I did several attempts with various cheatcodes but none was helping me.

Then I booted up with

knoppix 2

which keeps Linux in textmode. Next I did

X -configure

this created a new //xorg.conf.new file.
I tried next

X -config //xorg.conf.new

and now X came up with a normal canvas. Last step was

cp //xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

init 5 brought up everything normal

This may help others

Kees