framebuffer problems on revA iMac

[Mark Hepburn <mark_h@postoffice.utas.edu.au>]

Hi; I've been through the archives but couldn't find anything related.

I've just installed debianppc on my reva imac.  The first couple of times I
tried booting from cds everything went fine; however I messed up the
partitioning the first installation attempt and had to try again.  Since
then however when booting from the cds the curses display doesn't draw
correctly; roughly the top third of the screen is 'blue' while the rest is
black, and old dialog boxes can be seen 'underneath' newer ones.

Problems persisted after installation; the system works fine but the screen
doesn't refresh properly.  Typing 'clear' clears only the top 10 or so
lines, and the last line on the screen is always an echo of what came
before; eg

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
cccccccccccccccccccc
prompt~$ccccccccccccbbbbbbbbbbbbbbaaaaa

I finally cured the console problem by using a 'novideo' option  in my
yaboot.conf (after video=atyfb and aty128fb didn't work), but now of course
I'm stuck at a lower resolution in X (tried both XF86_FBDev and Xpmac).
I'm happy to live with the console as it is (25x80 chars or whatever), but
I'd like 1024x768 in X if possible!

Anyone have any ideas?

Apologies if this is too long; I was trying to supply all info that might
be helpful.

Thanks very much, Mark.