'you have entered a undefined mode number'

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: 'you have entered a undefined mode number'
started by: ibm5_25

Posted by ibm5_25 on Mar. 01 2004,21:05

I just tried (thanks to a kind librarian) DSL 0.6.1 on one of the machines at my high school. After mucking around with some old finkiky equipment, he let me try one of the computers that are used daily. DSL booted fine, the only problem was that when I got to the boot prompt and then hit enter, I got a new error message: "you have entered a undefined mode number" (which refers, I assume to the VGA paramaters etc.). I have never seen this before. DSL gave me the option to 'scan' which I did, but that just resulted in a blank, black screen for some time. I tried again and just let it go... it booted OK, but didn't look good at all. The menu was unreadable in most style setting, or, if readable at all, only when the entry was hightlighted. Any thoughts?

Posted by roberts on Mar. 01 2004,21:14

When you get that message the video is not able to support the small characters.
Try entering 0. That will use the normal VGA large characters. Then when you get to the X setup screens you will probably have to try serveral options. Say, start with 800x600. If the X still looks ugly then just exit X with ctr-alt-backspace and try another X setting.

Posted by ibm5_25 on Mar. 01 2004,23:35

Thanks, I'll work with it tonight and give it a try tomorrow.