Re: penguines from hell

[http://www.continuum_si.com/~robert (Robert)]

 > From: http://www.sfbg.com/~darrel_ritcht (darrel i. ritcht)
 > Date: Tue  Dec  1,  3:12pm
 >
 > Hey Robert!!! Super Solstice!#@$! how's the three hour commute in the snow
 > going??

Fine... 'cept it's not snowing!  Good old La Nina...

 > hope your house is patching up good.,

The roof leaks...

 > did you ever think about
 > renting out your house and getting an apt closer to your job??

Only if Noelle weren't working.  Maybe I could rent it to Noelle!?

 > Anyway, I
 > finally got
 > xwindows on my 486 dumpster box and (Suprise!!!)am having a little trouble
 > configuring it. It seemed to work ok at first except that  what appered on
 > the screen seemed to be just a section of a much larger screen-as ifthere
 > was a mask taped over a much larger image with the curser being inlarged
 > i.5 in across. I could acess some of the menus by moving the cursor to the
 > edge of the screen but the menus themselfs were not visable- I say were
 > because of course I tried to fuckwidit by running the x auto config
 > program acouple of times,, It was weird cause the auto config pgrm which
 > runs in graphics mode was correctly proportioned on my screen ( screen is 
 > 10X7.5 in, mono vga, according to the info from the various autoprobe
 > pgrms vidio mode=3, columns =80, rows=25, whatever that means;-) the first
 > couple of times I ran auto config I kept getting the same results of the
 > image being to big for my screen,then I tried plugging in the rows-columns
 > info into the monitor portion of the auto config selections with the
 > result that at first 
 > the X startup error messages said that it was an illegal value to be
 > ignored 
 > and now after I rebooted the main startup messages say "cant find server "
 > and asks me to  use "setserve" to name the server-what should I name it???
 > useless piece of shit???  I have the feeling the the problem is that there
 > multiple xconfig files that are conflicting with each other as a result of
 > running the autoconfig pgrm more than once. is it ok to just go and del 
 > all of them (if there more than one) or does the above described condition
 > mean that the system is irreparably fucked and its time for the reinstall,
 > (as the case would be if this was windoze95)?????????

The X configuration file is /etc/XF86Config.  Try tweeking it by hand and
play around with it.  It may give you a better feel for what's going on.

When you say "x auto config", do you mean "XF86Setup"?  Are you running
RedHat?  Unfortunately, I run Slackware, but I suspect that RedHat also
has "XF86Setup".  Try running it to see what happens.  I would keep
running it 'til "startx" works.  ("startx" is the command to start X
windows from the console window.)

What kind of card do you have?  If it's a fairly recent video card, you
may have to download the latest X server off the net.  That's what I had
to do for my brother.  What a pain in the butt!

 > oh yea,
 > one of the most annoying thing about this setup is that after the
 > autoconfig graphics run fine at the very end of setup the screen says
 > "just a moment "
 > and then brings up the screen for the xvidmode which I belive might be a
 > way to correct this problem, but the screen which has menu buttons on it 
 > is TO BIG and all the buttons are in the part that the mouse can't get to.

This was exactly the problem I had with my brother's computer & his video
card.  His card is a SiS-something.  But if you have old hardware, the
problem probably isn't not an unsupported video card.

 > all I can see is a cutoff part of the message saying "if you wol" ,"the
 > xvidm"
 > written to big, how frustrating!!!!!!! do you know if there is some
 > combination of key strokes that I can use to start xvidmode at this
 > screen?

No, I don't know.

 > or is there a way to start it outside of x????

Again, I don't know.

 > and what would be
 > the right parameters to use if i ever get to that point again?????
 > anyway-hope you folks is do'in allright,outtasight,righton&solid!!
 > and thanx in advance for any help, advice, magic cure-alls, ridicule or
 > scorn
 > in relation to this project or anything else..........
 > (I realise that getting a new monitor might be the quick "throw the money
 > at
 >  it" solution, but I'm trying to keep this system  100% dumpster, the only
 > component I did'nt find in the trash is your old keyboard, and you were
 > going to throw that out to ....................)  

It's very unlikely to be the monitor.  My brother's monitor is real shit,
but I managed to make things look pretty good on it.  (Though, I was
really pushing the monitor.  It probably won't last very long under this
condition.  He needs a new monitor, anyway :-)  It's probably the software
& video card.

Hope I've helped.  Configuring X is quite difficult w/o actually being
there...  Just repeat "it's the card, it's the card" (or if you're in
Boston, "it's the caud, it's the caud")...

 > 			TTFN q8?> will.  
 >