Hello. When I start an X server with the slackware or knoppix 3.4 distro's, the system freezes (because of video). I'll focus on knoppix because that is what I currently use and the problem for both distro's are the same.

If I start knoppix without any boot params ("cheat codes") it will freeze, I forgot at what point it freezes but i beleive it is in the begining of the linux boot process before it even recognizes the hard drives. But if I use framebuffer mode [fb1024x768] it starts normally and starts up KDE.

The only problem that I have with this is that the screen is grainy, lacking a higher amount of colors displayed on screen. I see that in frame buffer mode it uses less colors and I later read up on fb finding out that this method provides no graphics acceleration etc.

How can I get my graphics card to work better with knoppix? Or how can I get Frame Buffer mode to have more color? I had Fedora Core 1 on the computer that has this problem and also Red Hat 8-9 and the X server worked at optimal performance and was very pleasing to the eye.

I reffered to the knoppix faq (KNOPPIX-FAQ-EN.txt) for a solution which is how i was able to start knoppix with
Code:
fb1024x768
. The section of that file is "Q: My graphics card doesn't work!".

I used
Code:
lspci ; lspci -n
like the faq said, to get the pci information, the main purpose was to email it to [email protected] but klaus knopper already has over 4500 unread emails.

Code:
knoppix@ttyp0[knoppix]$ lspci ; lspci -n
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5597 [SiS5582] (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS85C503/5513 (LPC Bridge) (rev 01)
0000:00:01.1 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev d0)
0000:00:01.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 10)
0000:00:09.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 300/305 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter (rev 90)
0000:00:0b.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 07)
0000:00:0b.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! MIDI/Game Port (rev 07)
0000:00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 02)
0000:00:14.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5597/5598/6326 VGA (rev 65)
0000:00:00.0 Class 0600: 1039:5597 (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 Class 0601: 1039:0008 (rev 01)
0000:00:01.1 Class 0101: 1039:5513 (rev d0)
0000:00:01.2 Class 0c03: 1039:7001 (rev 10)
0000:00:09.0 Class 0300: 1039:0300 (rev 90)
0000:00:0b.0 Class 0401: 1102:0002 (rev 07)
0000:00:0b.1 Class 0980: 1102:7002 (rev 07)
0000:00:0d.0 Class 0200: 8086:1229 (rev 02)
0000:00:14.0 Class 0300: 1039:0200 (rev 65)
As you can see from line 6 of the lspci output I have an SiS 300/305 graphics chipset and the card itself is a "Pine XP-PCI2800" 3D Phantom PCI. This card has 32MB RAM, and does not support OpenGL too well.. very unfortunate.

So basically I need help with getting this card to work without the Frame Buffer or at least to get the Frame Buffer to run with a better quality display.

Thanks in advance.