Laptops :: No display



Hello everybody. I have a really old (11years!) Panasonic CF-V21P laptop. It's maxed out at 20MB ram, has a 512.45MB HD, 50MHz (486DX/2) processor, and a floppy drive. Using a floppy with DOS 6.22, and a parallel-port Zip drive, I transferred over the KNOPPIX file on the newly-formatted harddrive.

Using the boot floppy, DSL loads up at first perfectly from the hard drive (/dev/hda1). After it autoconfigures the devices, and you then go to xsetup for the video modes and setup the mouse, I have trouble. I can see the two video mode choices, and select them, but none of them work. That's right, both Xfbdev and Xvesa don't work. Upon selecting a Xvesa video mode (and setting up the mouse), the display just goes black. And when I try Xfbdev (and finish setting up the mouse), I get a message that says:
"modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module fb0
XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on Xserver ':0.0'
After 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining."
Then on most occasions, it has root@tty1[/]# - just a text terminal

Why is DSL unable to display a desktop GUI on my laptop?

EDIT: just wanted to add that I discovered I can acess the terminal after it goes black on Xvesa mode by hittin alt+f4. This lets me know it's not frozen I suppose, but still not good.
Hi
Just a couple ideas.  Instead of a blank screen you may be seeing just a portion of a screen with a black background.  When you get to that point try doing CTRL-ALT-BKSP.  That's (control alt backspace) all at once.  That should kill the X server and take you back to a console prompt.  Then enter Xvesa -listmodes   .  That should let the Xvesa server test usable settings.  If it gives you a list try one.  Example:
Xvesa -screen 640x480x16
That should give you a blank screen with an X in the middle.  Kill it with CTRL-ALT-BKSP again.  Take whatever value works and run xsetup.sh to enter it.  If you running from a hard drive install you may have to run it
sudo xsetup.sh in order for it to save properly.
Also, you might need to enter some # knoppix vga=(whatever) codes to use the fbdev server at the boot: prompt.
Here are some I use that may work with your old laptop:
vga=771    800x600 at 8 bpp
vga=769     640x480 at 8 bpp
I'm betting that the laptop can not do a better bpp than 8.
Once you enter that, then when you are up to the choose xserver box,
then pick fbdev, and you should get X up and running.
One other I use when I get a blank screen is vga=normal.
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:D
Thank you so much for the ideas. This weekend as soon as I have a chance, I'll give those a try and let you know how it goes over.
I do know that the laptop screen has strict limitations. Such as in windows 95 all it can do is 640X480 with 256 color or 16 color.  800X600 is optional, but the screen is unable to handle it.
try to boot
"knoppix vga=0"
Normal 80x25 chars but working
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