Fail to boot on a PIII with a 3DLabs Oxygen VX1 video card

[Francis J. Lacoste]

Binary package hint: syslinux

I tried installing Dapper on a PIII with a 3DLabs Oxygen VX1 video card.

With both the LiveCD and Alternate installer, I get the same result. Two lines are printed and then the screen turns black and everything stops. Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't even reboot the computer.

The two lines are the SYSLINUX line and then a line beginning with 'Loading ...'

[Francis J. Lacoste (flacoste)]

Colin Watson suggested holding the shift key while booting which should enable me to use text mode.

I will try this and report back if this works around the problem.

[Francis J. Lacoste (flacoste)]

Holding the shift key bypassed the graphical bootloader and the installer worked correctly after that.

Note that for some reason the screen resolution was not set correctly and the installation progressed in 640x480. After the installation completed, I was able to have all the resolutions supported by copying the detected vertical refresh rate and horizontal refresh sync from /var/log/Xorg.0.log to the xorg.conf file.

[Francis J. Lacoste (flacoste)]

Graphical bootloader doesn't like that particular card.

[Mark Melvin (mark-melvin)]

For those of us who may not be quite as proficient with Linux - here is a little more detail (I just struggled through this tonight for about an hour myself and this bug helped me 80% of the way).

In your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file, look for the following lines:

.
.
(II) GLINT(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines:
(II) GLINT(0): Modeline "800x600" 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync
(II) GLINT(0): Modeline "800x600" 36.00 800 824 896 1024 600 601 603 625 +hsync +vsync
.
.etc..

Copy all of these "Modelines" entries into the "Monitor" section of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, removing the "(II) GLINT(0): " part. For example, now the Monitor section of your xorg.conf file may look like this:

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier "NEC FE950+"
 Option "DPMS"
 Modeline "800x600" 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync
 Modeline "800x600" 36.00 800 824 896 1024 600 601 603 625 +hsync +vsync
 .
 .etc.
EndSection

However! This still did not work for me. I was not given any other resolution options after restarting X (and after restarting my machine). It turns out I had to specify the horizontal sync and vertical refresh ranges of my monitor as well. This information is also in the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file. For my monitor, I found these lines:

(II) GLINT(0): Supported additional Video Mode:
(II) GLINT(0): clock: 157.5 MHz Image Size: 356 x 267 mm
(II) GLINT(0): h_active: 1280 h_sync: 1344 h_sync_end 1504 h_blank_end 1728 h_border: 0
(II) GLINT(0): v_active: 1024 v_sync: 1025 v_sync_end 1028 v_blanking: 1072 v_border: 0
(II) GLINT(0): Ranges: V min: 50 V max: 160 Hz, H min: 30 H max: 96 kHz, PixClock max 240 MHz
(II) GLINT(0): Monitor name: NEC FE950+

I took the "Ranges:" line, found more information about the format of the xorg.conf file online, and edited my xorg.conf file further. Now the "Monitor" section of my xorg.conf file looks like this:

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier "NEC FE950+"
 Option "DPMS"
 HorizSync 30-96
 VertRefresh 50-160
 Modeline "800x600" 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync
 Modeline "800x600" 36.00 800 824 896 1024 600 601 603 625 +hsync +vsync
 Modeline "640x480" 31.50 640 656 720 840 480 481 484 500 -hsync -vsync
 Modeline "640x480" 31.50 640 664 704 832 480 489 491 520 -hsync -vsync
 Modeline "640x480" 30.24 640 704 768 864 480 483 486 525 -hsync -vsync
 Modeline "640x480" 25.20 640 656 752 800 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync
 Modeline "720x400" 35.50 720 738 846 900 400 421 423 449 -hsync -vsync
 Modeline "720x400" 28.32 720 738 846 900 400 412 414 449 -hsync +vsync
 Modeline "1280x1024" 135.00 1280 1296 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
 Modeline "1024x768" 78.80 1024 1040 1136 1312 768 769 772 800 +hsync +vsync
 Modeline "1024x768" 75.00 1024 1048 1184 1328 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync
 Modeline "1024x768" 65.00 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync
 Modeline "1024x768" 44.90 1024 1032 1208 1264 768 768 776 817 interlace +hsync +vsync
 Modeline "832x624" 57.28 832 864 928 1152 624 625 628 667 -hsync -vsync
 Modeline "800x600" 49.50 800 816 896 1056 600 601 604 625 +hsync...

[Francesco Brozzu (francescobrozzu)]

This bug is present in the final release of maverick (testing) correct this soon.