screen goes black..

[Rick Thomas]

I'm assuming that the "Power Center 150" is an "Old World" machine 
so you are using BootX to load Linux.

In that case, try checking the "No video driver" box on the BootX 
screen, and/or (probably "and") the "Force video settings" checkbox 
in the BootX Options screen.  This will force the Linux Kernel to 
use the built-in fail-safe firmware-defined frame buffer, rather 
than the accelerated, specially customized interface that the 
manufacturer provided for your video card.  You don't seem to be 
the type that is concerned about getting the best possible video 
performance (800x600 and thousands of colors is pretty minimal) so 
you'll probably be happy with the results.  And it will work well 
enough for you to experiment with other settings if you want.

I've seen a tech note that somebody wrote that gives a cookbook for 
which of the various vmode and cmode parameters to use with which 
video cards, but I've lost the URL.  Does anybody on the list have 
it?

Rick


On Sunday, May 18, 2003, at 11:17 AM, bruce woller wrote:

> Hey:
>
> I have both YDL2 & 3 booting from an external SCSI HD.  There is 
> one difference between 2 & 3 - that being that SCSI support loads 
> as modules in 3 whereas it is built into the kernel in 2.  So in 3 
> if you have SCSI you must have the 
> 'initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-8d.img' line in your yaboot.conf 
> (newworld) or boot parms with BootX(oldworld). Or optionally 
> recompile the kernel with SCSI built in.   See discussion YDL 3.0 
> catch-22
> I have had similar problems(black screen) with my G3 B&W.  One 
> solution was to add 'append="video=aty128fb:vmode:15,cmode:16"' to 
> the boot command line.  You might give it a try?
>
> Regards,
> Bruce
> On Sunday, May 18, 2003, at 07:46  AM, Jeremy Steele wrote:
>
>> It does that because ydl cannot boot on external hard drives. As 
>> far as I know it has to be in an internal hd.
>>
>> On Sunday, May 18, 2003, at 08:12 AM, rjgoos@ydl.net wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, I've been trying to get either YDL 2 or YDL 3 to run on a 
>>> Power Center 150
>>> (lots of ram, YDL installed on an external scsi drive).
>>>
>>> The same problem happens either YDL 2 or 3...everything installs 
>>> perfectly, but
>>> when I boot into Linux, things go black after it is done with the 
>>> text part of
>>> boot-up.  If I use text login, it goes black after I log in (KDE 
>>> continues to
>>> load, you can tell because of the sound ditty that plays during 
>>> the desktop
>>> loading).  If I use graphical login, it goes black when it tries 
>>> to load the
>>> graphical login screen.
>>>
>>> Obviously it doesn't like something about the video on the 
>>> machine, which has
>>> nothing but an Apple "platinum" video card.
>>>
>>> Any suggestions?  I choose 800 x 600 and thousands of colors during
>>> installation, should I have chosen something else?  I have an 
>>> Applevision 1710
>>> monitor.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> RJ Goos