Topic: Display problems installing SME7

[agayton]

I am a newbie to SME and I am having quite a problem getting it to install. Everything seems to go fine till the first reboot then I get just past the screen with the penguin and my display goes garbled:



I am running a PIII 850 on a Tyan 1854 Trinity 400 with the latest BIOS. I have and Nvidia Geforce2 MX400 card. The chipset is VIA

I have tried the following things:
1. hit shift and done smei586, nofb, resolution= (various settings) and various combinations of these settings
2. different video cards (nividia tnt2 and trident (with the trident card I get a blank screen instead of the garbage))
3. Different monitors (Viewsonic q71 and dell e196fp)
4. another identical computer
5. new cd (md5 checked and tested at load time)
6. default settings in BIOS (plus some others)
A friend has an identical machine and used the Trident video card with no problems.
Any thoughts?

ag

[bpivk]

You have a bad video card. I had the same problems and had to change three cards to fix it. I had a GF 2 mx card as you have and i had the same  problems with letters. As soon as i got trough bios i couldn't read a word.

[agayton]

You have a bad video card.

I have tried 4 cards so far and I know that 3 of them work in a Windows environment. Plus I can get through the entire first part of the install all the way till a reboot. (there is one brief moment between boot and the installer that is garbled but then it straightens back out. Even did a gui install one time with no problems till the reboot. I don't see how all the cards could be bad just partly but who knows (got to bad PVR 150's the other day so maybe. Could it be that the card is being sent the wrong refresh or resolution? How would one change that? In GRUB?

ag

[bpivk]

Well if 4 of them have problems and work in windows then ok. My cards had the same issues in windows and linux.

You should pres shift to go to command menu and i think that you have some options there. Will check and post back.

[agayton]

Thanks bpivk,

You got me thinking in a different direction. I "borrowed" the old STB Voodoo 16mb card out of my ClarkConnect box (stuck one of the others in it). Figure this SME box will be replacing that one anyway so might as well use what I need. Worked like a top!

Not sure if this would qualify as something for the bug tracker or not. If someone thinks it does i'll put it in or I'll be glad to provide details to one of the pros on the board if they want to (sure they would know better how to submit it than me....real new to LINUX)

ag