X Windows problems on Compaq Armada 1500c laptop

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cygnus
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X Windows problems on Compaq Armada 1500c laptop

#1 Post by cygnus »

I have an old Compaq Armada 1500c laptop with some sort of Chips & Tech video card (computer's at home, I'm at work :( ), and when I boot it into Puppy, all I get is a black screen with red and green ghost images of the icons and the wallpaper bird. I'm guessing it's some sort of video option or incompatibility. I've searched the forum and wiki and couldn't find an answer.

I'd really like to use Puppy on this machine. I've used it on my old HP desktop and it works great. I've tried other live CDs and they work on the laptop just fine. I'd appreciate any help.
Last edited by cygnus on Fri 22 Jul 2005, 14:28, edited 1 time in total.
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Rich
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#2 Post by Rich »

On the hardware page in the wiki, the Compaq armada 1500c is listed as working with Puppy ( albeit with dodgy sound ). So it should work on yours.

Can you get the command line displayed ok? this would be a big help in troubleshooting your system

Rich

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cygnus
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#3 Post by cygnus »

Sorry, I should've been more clear. I can Ctrl-Alt-Backspace out of X and get to a normal looking terminal. I've tried fishing around the filesystem, but I'm still not that good at Linux yet (I know enough to be dangerous :) ). I'm sure there's some config file somewhere that's getting in the way. I just don't know what it is or where to find it.
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cygnus
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#4 Post by cygnus »

I tried it again yesterday after work and still couldn't get X to work properly. I tried a few new things from the command line. I ran "xinit" instead of "xwin" and was greeted with an extremely rudimentary window manager (very low res, no icons on desktop, no desktop image) but I was able to use the menu. I tried to run the Xvesa Wizard, and when I chose a resolution (I picked 800x640x16, which is what it runs in Windows), X crashed and I was back to the terminal. I tried it again with the lowest possible resolution, and when it spit me back to the terminal, there was an error saying, in a nutshell, that it tried to run X with the lowest possible resolution and failed.

I know there's a config file somewhere, but I couldn't find it for all my fishing around. I would really appreciate any help I could get on this.
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Flash
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#5 Post by Flash »

There was a lot of activity in the forum re framebuffering a while back. I got the impression it was sorted out and would be automagically configured by Puppy 1.0.4, but maybe not.

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cygnus
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#6 Post by cygnus »

UPDATE: I tried versions 1.0.2, 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 of Puppy and they all do the same thing. I also tried Damn Small Linux 1.2 and it was the same. But, I have an Ubuntu live CD that worked and BeatrIX, a Debian- and Ubuntu-based live CD, also worked; however, the framebuffer boot screen was black.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. I'll also get some specs up here later.

I also tried to start xwin with jwm instead of Fvwm95, and it did the same thing. The problem is X, not the window manager.
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Guest

#7 Post by Guest »

Have a look in announcements for my version with XFree86.....Hopefully sometime in the next few days I'll have a version based on 1.0.4 but the current one I made is based on 1.0.3 and I know works well with NeoMagic(Evil) chips and we've had some success as well with i810 chips so this maybe what you maybe lokking for....

Look if you could do everyone a huge favour and download it and have a play see if you can get it going, I'll help with any problems and I'll put in any extras you need into the next release

http://www.edgarbrits.net/puppy/cd-pupp ... theros.iso

After booting you must type xwin to start the gui

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cygnus
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#8 Post by cygnus »

bladehunter:

Oddly enough, right before I left work on Friday I downloaded and burned your copy of Puupy in hopes it would solve my problem. Unfortunately, it did the same thing. Not only that, but when I rebooted into Winblows 98, it said my registry was f'ed up and needed to be fixed (which all happened automatically, sort of). Basically, my Winblows works fine again, but Puppy still doesn't.

I'm starting to give up on ever getting Linux to work properly on this machine. I bought it from work earlier this year (it had been replaced with a new desktop, and was sitting in the systems office here unused) with the sole purpose of making it a dual-boot Windows-Linux machine, and so far I haven't got it to work. I was hoping Puppy would be the answer (light, fast, good for older hardware), since it works so well on my old desktop computer. If you (or anyone else) could point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it.

Here are some basic specs (I can get more if anyone needs them):

Model: Compaq Armada 1500c (circa 1999)
Processor: Celeron 400Mhz (Pentium II-based)
Memory: 160MB (maxed out)
Video card: Chips & Tech 69000
Max resolution: 800x640 (that I know of - everything I've put on it will only run up to that resolution, including Windows)
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cygnus
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#9 Post by cygnus »

I made a change to my specs. It's actually a 69000 video card, not 65555. It also has 2MB of memory. I googled all day long and couldn't get any good answers to this problem. There were a few links to sites about Linux on a 1500c, but they must have been old because the sites no longer exist. I was able to glean a little information on the chip and monitor.

The max resolution is 800x640. Horizontal sync is 30-65kHz, vertical refresh is 50-100 Hz. From what I've read, older (pre-3.3.1) XFree86 drivers don't support this card, which shouldn't be a problem with Puppy. I've also seen a LOT of people with X problems on many flavors of Compaq laptops (believe me, if I didn't get such a screaming deal on it, I never would have bought it). I'm going to try one more distro on it (SimplyMEPIS - downloading it now) and if I can't get it to work, I'm just going to live with my Windows 98 system and keep playing with Puppy on my old desktop.

On a side note, I have Puppy almost to my liking on my desktop. I installed the Fluxbox DotPup, and I want to either install Firefox or create my own Puppy with Unleashed. Despite the hiccups with my laptop, I still love this distro.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast

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