I have a Compaq Proliant 1600 Server (dual 400Mhz Pentium II) that I've been trying to run Knoppix 4.0 Live-CD, without success.

The system will lock up at the point where the X video process is launched (typically after "Init 5") - cannot get to any other tty screen, etc and forces power-down reboot.

Windows 98SE boots correctly from a hard drive partition and shows that the display adaptor "device is working properly" (video driver Cirrus Logic 5446 PCI, and lists cirrusmm.drv, cirrus.vxd, vmm32.vxd, vdd.vxd, vflatd.vxd).

I have tried several other hardware and software solutions to see if anything improved:ATI PCI video card, a separate cirrus logic based PCI card, three different monitors (Gateway, Samatron, NEC), different Linux distros (Knoppix 4.0, Kanotix live 2005.4, DSL, Slax 5.0.6, Edubuntu 6.06 beta 2, and Debian Sarge hard disk install that worked as long as it remained in text mode but froze after starting Xdm server). I am currently downloading SUSE 10.1 to try that...

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Hardware specifications:
Compaq Proliant 1600 server
2x Intel Pentium II at 400Mhz (dual processors)
320MB Ram BIOS 'A08 (8/17/9

Video adapter: VGA on system board
Chipset Cirrus logic CL-GD5446 visualmedia, ramdac cirrus internal CL24 truecolor
vidoe bios Cirrus logic, quadtel 1.31, vesa support VBE 2.0, SVGA 1MB,
supported VESA modes: 800x600x16; 800x600x256; 1024x768x16

Monitor: VGA analog color Samtron 76e/77e (also tried a NEC multisync & Gateway VX900)

Motherboard:
Intel chipset 82443BX/ZX 440BX/ZX (AGP)
Intel southbridge 8237eb/mb PIIX4E/M
PCI bus version 2.10
Super IO chip: Winbond W83877TF
Network adapter integrated netelligent PCI TLAN

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Specific knoppix 4.0 boot testing options and results
boot: knoppix vga=0
after "Init 5" the screen flashes, shows Xfree86..., clears and locks up (power off required)
boot: knoppix acpi=off pnpbios=off napic noapm
after "Init 5" the screen flashes shows Xfree86..., clears and locks up (power off required)
boot: failsafe debug -b 3
after stage 3, type exit, results “bash: no job control�, type exit twice more, “autoconfiguring devices...Init runlevel 3�, type exit and response is “logout� over and over. Just prior to “Init 3� showed “video is GD544x GD 5446 using Xfree86(vesa) Server, Monitor is GWY0013, H:30-95kHz, V: 50-160hz, using modes “1600x1200�...�640x480� even though the monitor was hooked to the ATI PCI board.
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My goal is to install a Knoppix/Debian variant and run this as a LTSP server for a couple of old clients but I can't get passed the server installation.

John