PLEASE HELP! DISPLAY PROBLEMS!

[darshdeep]

hey,

i finally decided to try out this whole linux thing, and i chose knoppix to start with because it seemed very simple, however i ran into a pretty bad problem. im a complete noob, so please bear with me.

alright, i downloaded knoppix 3.8.2, the latest one i could find, and burnt the .iso onto a disc. i set my bios and popped the disc in. everything works fine, i get to the main knoppix screen and it says "boot:". i did the "knoppix lang=us" for the english language, and then it continued to load and did all the hardware checks and everything, everything was working fine. when it started to load the XWindow program or whatever its called, the screen turns black and there is only a rectangle the width of my computer screen, at the top of the screen. after its done loading, i can see the top portion of the desktop, the trash is there and the top of a window. but the rest of the screen is black. i assumed this is a display problem. i tried a couple of the cheatcodes for knoppix, like "knoppix screen=800x600" and "xvrefresh=60" and "hsync=60". nothing works, and i tried a bunch of different combinations, i cant get it to work. i have a pretty slow computer but it meets the requirements. my comp has 128 RAM, and a 1Ghz intel processor, i have a i810 intel card. the monitor i have is a Compaq Presario MV500, it is pretty old. i think the problem has something to do with framerates or something, but i really have no clue. i googled some info about my monitor like the framerates it handles and all of that, but i don't understand half the crap it told me. i really want to see how this whole linux thing works, so please help me!!!

thanks alot,
any help would be greatly appreciated...

[darshdeep]

correction: it is an 82810 intel video card, it is pretty old, and came with my computer

[gadgerama]

um ... what about:

vga=normal
fb800x600 (or any other res)
and I always have to chuck in 'nodma' just to get the thing to work at all.

Good Luck