RH8 and X Server errors

[TheOldMan]

Hi guys,

I know issues like this have been discussed so I apologize in advance. I've been doing a lot of searching and reading but I can not find the answer that fits my condition. I've found many that are close but they don't post back with what they did to fix it!! Or maybe my brain is just fried since I've been stressing over this.

Just downloaded and installed RH8 and loaded it on an old Micron with Pentium Pro 200 MHz. Memory is 384 MB and there is a Diamond Multimedia Speedstar 64 ISA display adapter. It's dual-booting fine [most of the time] with Win2K server. I've been able to implement NTFS support and can access SMB shares with Samba. Telnet and FTP servers are running just fine. In other words, everything looks great except I can NOT get the X Server running!

Install failed to detect the adapter and monitor so I set it to the appropriate Diamond Speedstar and Phillips monitor settings. On boot, however, it reported
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Fatal Server Error
[Didn't copy down the original error]

XIO: Fatal IO Error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
=========
I tried reinstalling with a generic VGA adapter with a generic monitor and then startx gets
=========
Fatal Server Error
AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0

XIO: Fatal IO Error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
=========

I even tried downgrading the xFree86 from V4.2.0 to V3.3.6 thinking it may support legacy adapters better. Same thing.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

The Old Man

[MaXimum SMOKE]

If my memory is any good at this... The last time I worked with a similar card, it was an old ISA VLB. At any rate, my best luck was to get the vid chip number off of the card. (Think mine had a Cirrus Logic GDx something)... At any rate I had to run the old Xfree86 setup program and choose the card by the vid chip instead of the proper name of the card. Also if I remember right.... using an ISA vid card seemed to make it harder to get an acceptable refresh rate, and I had to hand enter all the vert & horizontal frequencies by hand from the monitor's specification sheet, into the setup program. I'm not sure what RH 8 has left over from the older X setup tools.. Sorry, but that's the best I can remember. When I started using PCI vid cards, life got a lot easier...

[TheOldMan]

Thanks for the info, MaXimum SMOKE. I suspected I was going to have to do that but I was hoping for a silver bullet. Oh well ...

I'll give it a shot and let you know what happens.

Thanks again,
The Old Man

[TheOldMan]

An update.

I've made some small progress. By using the plugged in horizontal and vertical scan and refresh rate along with a generic vga driver, I was able to get X to start. Unfortunately, I only get big fonts and only the lower half of the screen. If I try to use the actual card/chipset or a higer color depth, I get an error.

The mouse acts very funky also. It's an MS Intellimouse with IntelliEye plugged into the mouse socket. I configured it as an MS Intellimouse on /dev/mouse with no thord button emulation.

I'll just keep plugging away but if anyone has any insight, I would sure appreciate it.

The Old Man

[MaXimum SMOKE]

I'm guessing that this vid card has 1 meg or less memory on it, and Xfree86 can't determine what resolutions it can give you. I'm guessing that 8 bit at 640 x 480 is going to be tops. If this is an old monitor it may not be able to get past 640 x 480, but I'm only guessing here,

[TheOldMan]

MaXimum SMOKE,

Good guesses. The board is vintage '95 and it has 1 Mb on board. The monitor is a newer Philips 170S. I use it on other machines with 1024x768 high-color resolution so I know that is not the problem.

xFree86 did appear to get the resolutions correct but it does not seem to do any good. I tried both 8 bit and 16 bit settings. I've seen in other posts that there is also an XF86Conf-4 file in some cases which seems to be the "real" config file but I don't find it anywhere.

I'm used to the CLI but the GUI makes it a little easier when you are poking around looking for things. Oh well.

Thanks again for your help.
The Old Man