Re: X working on Thinkpad A31p, but is it safe?
On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Ivan Uemlianin wrote:
> Downloading the XFree86 4.2 from the Net is not feasible for me, as I
> have only a 56k modem. I had a go building the source code (which I
> have from a magazine coverCD): this went well until I tried 'startx'
> and was told, "/usr/X11/startx: no such file or directory".
> Interestingly it didn't say 'no such command.
You might find that the download of the binary Debian packages is
tolerable if you leave it running overnight, and that's probably the
easiest way to get it all working well, as...
> I finally got X 4.1 working by ticking the VESA option on the video
> chip dialog, and making sure the default horizontal and vertical sync
> rates were below 60Hz. VESA (Video Something Standard Architecture)
> was an option my old SuSE distro had for if it couldn't recognise
> video chips. It seems to work: there's an odd flicker for a very brief
> moment before twm comes up (Yep, twm on a Thinkpad A31p), but then
> everything works fine.
>
> Big question : Is it safe, or am I potentially damaging my hardware?
...the VESA driver is perfectly safe and works OK, but it's /slow/ and
tends to have issues with making the keyboard misbehave for me, at
least, on the same hardware.
OTOH I did run with it for a month and a half, so it's not going to
break anything. :)
Daniel
--
Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the
best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
-- Gilda Radner
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