[mdlug] System Build Saga

[Jeff Hanson]

On 7/10/07, David Lane <dcl400m at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Once the mothe board was replaced the install was okay.  Just watch out for
> off brand motherboards.

I encounter similar issues with old hardware.  The first thing I do is
upgrade the BIOS.  Then I start working through the problems, one step
at a time.  With graphics issues I try the vga=normal boot parameter,
then changing to a different video chip (a card instead of integrated,
etc.), manually setting xorg.conf, changing BIOS settings, checking
the logs in /var/log, a different distro, and search the Internet too
of course.  Similar steps for other hardware.  Sometimes it turns out
to be something stupid like a loose card or cable.  Sometimes its
hardware without stable drivers or some setting buried in a doc
somewhere.  Last weekend I blew several hours trying to get an old
Nvidia TNT2 M64 card on a SiS 741 MB to not crash the system when X
started.  It turned out I needed NvAgp "1" in xorg.conf to use the
Nvidia AGP driver instead of the kernel's default.  It eats up lots of
time but it was educational.