Warning: Possible Bug in BIOS DELL Latitude D400_A06 !
Serious Warning - Possible Bug in BIOS update !
A06 will not support any UNIX-/ LINUX-GUI (at least on this machine).
I tried Debian-Linux ('testing'); and tried OpenBSD 3.5 (multi-boot).
Both will inevitably fail with a light yellow screen and an unresponsive keyboard
(no Ctrl-Alt-Del; neither Ctrl-Alt-Backslash). Only hard reset will help.
This also applies to the (possible) XFree86 configuration method:
# cd
# XFree86 -configure [goes through]
# XFree86 -xf86config /root/XF86config.new [freezes as above]
XP, however, starts well !
Confirmation: I could - puuhh - flash it back to A03 and it is back at
work without any problems.
DELL must urgently investigate this problem and find out if this is
machine-specific for my machine or a bug effecting everyone.
I can also confirm, that during both flashing operations no error or
warning was given; the checksums considered okay.
So I have to assume that the problem is not based on a download-error.
It *may* be machine-specific, though, since I had earlier filed a problem
with DELL that the flashing operation had not been possible from XP. This
problem had been unresolved despite various on- and off-site efforts by
DELL technicians. (ET20040709_0000004929)
Any BIOS-Update for this type of machine is discouraged as long as it is
not guaranteed to be a problem of an individual machine. Still, YMMV.
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