Laptops :: It works! I'm shocked! And Weird Screen Colors
I'm writing this from within windows -bleh- as there are still some issues.
To start, I'm shocked. I went to the University, spent some money on 10 blank CDs toasted about 6 CD's before I finally gave up. Anyway the second last of the CD's I burned as just the iso as data to see if I was maybe recording wrong. I then went into the other CD's and noticed that one of them had folders within in it.
See what the error was: Nero was giving me a 'write error' after the burn finished, at %100 complete, and then aborted the rest of the burn. But after ruining 4 CD's I wasn't in the mood to try again so I just burned the ISO as a file thinking maybe I could hang onto it and go back to the university and try again another day. (I don't have a CD burner, so all this is quite hilarious)
well on a hunch I stuck the CD with the folder and booted it.
Lo and behold! LINUX! Damn Small Linux! Even though the burn -failed- I still have a DSL live CD! BOSS! JOY!
Now, the error: the screen resolution is very WEIRD. Three or four colors are displayed and no others; white and a green/yellow/blue hybrid. How do I fix the screen resolution from within DSL? Unless of course, this error has to do with a combination of my hardware and the fact that the CD had an error at the end of the burn.
Second: DSL automatically detected my D-Link PC Bus Ethernet card, my keyboard and PS/2 mouse, AND my USB. It connected me to the internet *albeit through a blue haze* and loaded all the icons I tested. 
I am happy.
*you spend 4 months in Windows you quickly start to get Linux withdrawl. Even my cruddy blue screen DSL is a wonderful sight to see.*
Did you try burning at a lower speed? Usually helps with some drives.
Anyways, you can try running xsetup.sh to change around your video modes.
Strangeseraph -
I have experience the same screen weirdness on these ThinkPad 600's I'm turning into digital picture frames. On the initial boots (booting from CD, init'ing hard drive, installing in 'frugal' mode) I have struggled through various 'fb<res>x<res> and 'dsl vga=<num>' options, combined with trying both Xvesa and whatever the other X setup option is, with inconsistent results.
So far I'm 2-for-2 successful, but I can't say I've figured out the procedure yet. These TP600's are 1024x768x16, but setting that initially still produces the weird color business.
I have three more to go, maybe by then I'll have figured it out.
Another comment---my initial 8x write of the LiveCD worked fine on an Inspiron 8000, but not at all on these TP600's. I had to re-burn at 2x (the slowest setting I could choose from in Nero) and that worked.
You might want to have a look at:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Vga%3Dxxx
This might help:
When you have DSL running and you see those weird colors. Hit CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE (or just exit window manager).
Then run setupx.sh and do not chose too much depth. I tried 32 bit and I had same kind of issues with my laptop.
Then run startx. Ok if your screen is still 'weird' then hit CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE again and chose even less depth. You might also try lower resolutios, but afaik too much resolution just makes whole screen unreadable but you had only color issue.
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