F8 LiveCD video problem on Dell C600

[le_jawa]

I tried booting the Fedora 8 live CD on my old Dell C600 laptop. It boots technically, but X isn't working right -- specifically, the video doesn't display properly at all -- pieces of the display overlap each other, so that some parts of the screen display in two places, while others are collapsed into a black line or don't show at all.

I tried hitting ESC and getting the boot: prompt for isolinux. From there I tried "linux vga= ____" and a resolution, as well as linux xmodule=r128 to try a different driver. That didn't work either; isolinux simply reported that it couldn't find the kernel named Linux. It looks like a driver problem to me, but I'm not sure of how to fix it.

Any suggestions for resolving this? Is there something I can do to make this work, or am I going completely overboard and making a simple solution too complicated? Any advice that gets this to work correctly will be appreciated. (Well, ok, any help is appreciated, but actually getting it to work would be a real bonus. ).

Thanks y'all!

Jason

[bwire66]

I just installed the F8 live CD on my Dell C600 just yesterday and have had zero problems. The display resolution defaulted to 800x600 and I went to Display Settings and set the monitor type to Dell 1024x768 Laptop Display Panel. After a reboot I was able to set the display resolution to 1024x768.

F8 runs great on this old unit!

[le_jawa]

bwire66,

Thanks for looking at my question and posting. Unfortunately, a post that basically says "It works for me!" really doesn't help me any. Also, I'm talking about running the Live CD, not installing.

When we install Fedora, we get a boot: prompt where we can do things like change resolution, video drivers, install mode, etc. Is there any way to do this with the F8 Live CD? If there is and someone can show me where to get some documentation on it, or give me a brief explanation of it, I would really appreciate it. If there's a better way, then I'm up for that too. (Obviously! )

Jason

[bwire66]

The point of my post was to show that there is nothing inherent with the C600 that would cause your problem, assuming that we have similar configurations (I have a Rage Mobility M3 chip). Of course I ran the Live CD prior to installing F8 and did not experience a problem.

Sorry I don't have more suggestions for you. Is it possible that you have a hardware problem?

[le_jawa]

Yeah, I've got the same chip, so that much should be the same. As for hardware problems, the thing's at least seven years old, so anything's possible. However, I do have MS Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux on it, and neither has given me any video trouble.

It is still interesting though that the Live CD runs fine on yours and not mine. If it's not a hardware problem, I have no idea of what it could be.