(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Running Puppy_winpup-ver-2-nov-29-2016.iso from an Easy2Boot USB stick:

I'd swapped out the DVI-to-VGA adapter for one that fits better in a cramped space, and suddenly about halfway through startup, Puppy whined,

"Cannot display this video mode"

proving that video was working, but not getting anywhere. (Actually I have two of this exact adapter and same problem with both.) I couldn't catch the last displayed line from startup.

Swapped back to the other adapter and WinPup worked fine again.

If I let WinPup boot up with the adapter it likes, then swap them, video continues to work normally. (Everything else seems to work too.)

The one it didn't like looks like this (I don't know where I got it)
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-DVI-Cab ... B000067SOH
Note that the main block of pins is completely filled in. I don't know if this matters.

The one that WinPup likes, I bought here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Video-Monitor-A ... 2271123426?
It does not look like the picture; only about half the pins are present in the main block of pins.

I just tried another random adapter of unknown origin that also has the complete block of pins, and it also works fine.

Working normally with this adapter that Win-Pup doesn't like:
Wary 5.5
Lighthouse64 602
X-Tahr 2.0
PCLinuxOS (current)
DOS
WinXP

This is all completely repeatable, as noted with two identical adapters.

<scratching head>

I thought these DVI-to-VGA adapters were just glorified pass-throughs? what's not to work??

I can break anything...

Maybe something to do with the graphics driver being used and how that driver gets loaded during bootup

bigpup wrote:Maybe something to do with the graphics driver being used and how that driver gets loaded during bootup

That's sure what it looks like. I don't know enough about it to do more than make that same guess. Can't see why one particular model of generic adapter gives it hives, tho.

Otherwise, on brief acquaintance WinPup behaved just fine, housebroken and everything.

Going to try a few more combinations of hardware and see if I can get it to happen with some other setup.

For the record, this box:

motherboard: Dell Foxcon DG33M04
CPU: Intel Q8300 2.5GHz
video: VisionTek Radeon 5450 PCIx16 1GB
same behavior with system RAM at 4GB PC2-5300 and 8GB PC2-6400
no drives attached

Come to think of it, Mint also worked fine with this same adapter, on a different box.

Winpuppy is based on tahrpup64 6.0.5 using kernel 3.14.54

All linux distros have crashed on me using the nouveau graphics driver.

That is why, Winpuppy uses a vesa driver.

I got the error again under different circumstances (trying to run a liveCD for something else) -- appears it's actually coming from GRUB. <scratching head>