Linux Xwindow problems

I just installed Red Hat 8.0 on an old computer that I had and I'm having problems with the Xwindow system. It's a P1 100, 32mb RAM, a 1.2 gig and 1.0 gig harddrive. The problem comes with the Cirrus Logic GD543x video card (1mb RAM). After I login it automatically starts Gnome I guess, but the screen flickers and when it comes back on there are a bunch of colors that are messed up and thats all....During the setup I chose 640x480 and 8 bit color. Has anybody else run a window system with this old a videocard? The Red Hat site says it's compatable (but maybe not with windows?)

Wow, that is a pretty old card. I remember getting that card to work in X, but i was using RedHat 4.2 at the time.

That link does show that the card is compatable with X, so it should only be a config issue. Sounds like the refresh rate could be incorrect, also make sure both the card and monitor support the refresh and res you are using (though i haven't come across a monitor that won't do 640x480).

I don't mind playing around with the command line to get the video card config working, but how can I get into the command line? When I boot my system it does everything automatically until it reaches the login screen. I start typing my username, but it automatically starts x! Of course it's messed up and I can't do anything. When I put the boot floppy in the boot: appears. Is there anything I can type into there to force it to use the command line?

Thanks

try typing "linux 3" at the boot prompt. this should start you in command line mode. If that doesn't work, wait for x to start and press ctrl+alt+f1 and you should get a logon prompt.

Ok, I got into the config using "xf86config". I used all the correct settings for my monitor and I found my cirrus logic in the list of cards. After the config was written, I typed startx and it went to the same colorful screen. After about 10 seconds it came back to the command line and had some errors:

(EE) CIRRUS(0): No valid MMIO address in PCI config space
(EE) CIRRUS(0): I2C initialization failed

*some mouse errors - thats because I have no mouse to plug in currently*

Fatal server Error:
Failed to initialize core devices

*then it mentioned reporting the problem to the xf86 website*

There is nothing wrong with my monitor because it's my main one for my other rig. I have the linux box connected with a KVM switch. Is it possible that the video card can't do a 2D environment anymore? It wouldn't let me use the graphical installation either.

Help!

Something I've been doing lately to trouble-shoot any config problems I have is to run a knoppix CD on the box. As long as you can boot from CD, you can give it a shot. It'll auto-configure everything, and then you can copy those configs to your hdd and apply them to your installed system.

Press F2 to get to the cheatcodes for Knoppix so you can boot to a specific resolution or tone down X in other ways. You'd probably have to select twm for your window manager and low-resoultion cheatcodes at boot. Might not have enough ram for knoppix unless you let it setup a small swap on a FAT32-formatted partition of your HDD... then you could let it run kde or gnome probably.

The trouble you may be having seems like it could be overwhelming that computer- P1 100, 32mb ram , 1mb vid card is pretty lite for X. Maybe try icewm or twm instead of gnome or kde.

Edit: Its very easy to use. Boot from cd, press F2 and enter cheatcodes, and it should do the rest. No guaruntess its auto-detection scripts will work right with all hardware, but it should figure out and configure 98% of what's out there.

Unfortunitedly I can't boot from CD-ROM in this computer. I'm looking into acquiring a cheap 16mb video card. I would think that would fix the problem...

EDIT: After looking at the site it seems Knoppix can be booted from a floppy also. Is it relatively easy to use? I'm sort of a newb

MMIO usually means "memory mapped IO"
A videocard maps in its on-card RAM to the memoryspace of the host computer. Usually at 0xA00 in real mode and way up in protected mode. PCI has a way to let the OS figure out where this is, since it can be different for each configuration (other stuff like NICs, SCSI adapters, etc can map in their memory as well). XFree86 couldn´t get the proper memory address with your PCI system, so it balked.

It would be a good idea to send a bugreport to xfree86.org as the error message suggested, so they might be able to include your machine/BIOS in the next release, fomr then on it will work