Bug#251823: d-i gives black screen Installing sarge beta4 and 20040530 on OldWorld Power Macs]

[Rick_Thomas <rbthomas@rcthomas.org>]

Package: installation-reports

Hardware -- Macintosh Power PC Beige G3 minitower and Mac PowerPC 6500

Software -- businesscard installation CDs for "beta4" and "20040530"
  downloaded from
http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/sarge_d-i/powerpc/{beta4|20040530}/
 

I boot using BootX (since the boot floppy approach won't work on
OldWorld machines now that miBoot is in the doghouse for being
politically incorrect)

I use BootX with kernel arguments "video=atyfb:vmode:3,cmode:16" and
leaving the two check-boxes blank having to do with video modes. 
This setup has worked for me in the past.

When I tell it to boot, I get the picture of Tux in the upper left part
of the screen, and the rest of the screen is scrolling text from the
kernel while it sets up the hardware.

Then the suddenly (about the time I'd expect to see the first
questions from d-i) the screen goes black.

Option-f{234} keys will switch to the usual virtual tty screens, which
show white text on a black background, pretty much as expected.  On the
"f4" screen, the last couple of lines are:

	main-menu[236]: DEBUG: configure cdebconf-udeb, status: 2
	frontend: Setting debconf/language to en

I get this behavior with both the Beta4 and the 20040530 "businesscard"
install CDs.

I've also tried various other video settings (with and without the BootX
video-mode checkboxes) to no avail.

I've tried setting DEBCONF_PRIORITY=medium, and that didn't help either.

Any suggestions?

Rick