Found one that works, but...

[pawz]

MandrakeLinux version 9 - it installed without a problem, and actually told me what it was doing all the way through and gave me a nice screen to look at. Good! I got to the desktop and was looking forward to a good explore, but the screen kept going black, every few seconds. Not always the same few seconds, but so frequently I could not look at much. How frustrating! I tried changing the resolution and getting as close to the monitor model, but that has not stopped it. I rebooted, hoping it would settle down then, but it hasn't. It doesn't start until the desktop - all the way through the loading screens it is fine, and everything OK's, then KDE (?) starts its routine, and from that point on the screen keeps blanking.

The machine is VERY old - a 255MHz old beastie, quite a lot of memory and ran Windows ME without a problem. The monitor is a flat screen, and that runs without a problem in Windows as well - so what can be causing this behaviour in Mandrake I wonder?

I don't want to try any more distros - Mandrake looks good. If you think I need a more powerful processor, then I will get another machine sorted, but I am hoping you will be able to say 'ahh yes! we know what that problem is! your just not holding your mouth right when you press Enter!' ( or something)

[waterhead]

Sounds like a problem with the video card driver. You may need to do the troubleshooting without the desktop GUI. Are you familiar with how to do this?

Now I don't know anything about your distro, so the things I ask work for me, in my distros. I hope they will work for you.

To open a login screen use this key combination: Ctrl+Alt+F1. To get back to the Desktop: Ctrl+Alt+F7. Login as root.

You want to look at your xorg.conf file. Go to that folder like this:

 cd /etc/X11/

And look at that directory

dir

You should see a file named xorg.conf. If not, it couild be x86.conf, or something similar.

Open the file in a text editor, like vi:

vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Look for the section titled "Device" and the driver that is listed. Post what you find listed. Also tell us what kind of video card you actually have. Use :q to exit

You may need to improvise a bit. If you get stuck, just ask for more help.

[pawz]

Thank you waterhead, I will have a go next time I have a session. It is an old ATI Rage Pro card in there I think.Will get back to you

[sizeablebigfoot]

Hi there,

Now I don't know much about your distro but I had a similar problem on my own (slackware). What I did to fix the problem was I exited from the x desktop to the command line and typed in "xorgsetup" (might have been "xorg setup"), then just follow the instructions on screen. This automatically sets up your video settings.

Now I'm fairly new to Linux myself and I cant be sure this will fix your problem, or if mandrake comes with this xorgsetup option but it can't hurt to try.

[waterhead]

You're gonna need to setup the ATI driver. I have never been unfortunate enough to have to do this, yet.

You may get by with using the generic vesa driver. Try putting that in the xorg.conf file, in the space for the driver.

I looked at the ATI web site, and they don't have any Linux drivers for the old Rage cards.

There is the GATOS driver, you would need to compile it from source. You can download it with this command:

wget http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gatos/ATI-6.7.0-exp1.i386.tar.gz

You unpack it with this:

tar xvfz ATI-6.7.0-exp1.i386.tar.gz

There is a README file with instructions, but I would look for more info before trying to do this.

EDIT: The README doesn't say anything about having to compile it, still look for more info.

[waterhead]

Here are is the GATOS web site with some instructions:
ati.2

[Dapper Dan]

Ah yes.... Mandrake 9... I have such fond memories. It was one of my favourites. The file would be /etc/X11/XF86-Config-4. As waterhead suggests, try the vesa driver and see if that will at least give you a usable desktop. Mandrake's video configuration utility is XFdrake. From the command line as su:

XFdrake

You might have to play with the settings a bit and experiment, but XFdrake is your best bet to get a usable desktop.