TiBook / Debian / X problems
Hi,
Yesterday I got a TiBook with an 800 MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a
40GB HDD, Radeon Mobility 7500 [32MB] video card, and an airport card
with it. My boss gave me his machine since he's just gotten one of
the new ones. I mention the source because that same morning I'd seen
everything functioning fine in OS X. He beat on the machine, but it
worked. I intend to pamper the hell out of it, but I digress.
In any case, I've installed Woody on the machine via CD. The system
installs fine, and if I had to, I could probably make do with no sort
of GUI at all. However, that's not really why I got the thing. Now,
I've followed two methods for getting X to work, neither have led me
to much success.
The first: Installing, apt-get'ing for updates, installing X 4.2.0
[R6.6] from source and the installing whatever the current benh-kernel
is through rsync using the linux-2.4 tree. I'd read somewhere that in
order to use X with my TiBook, I would have to use XFree86 4.2.0
because it's the only version with Radeon Mobility support. In order
to use 4.2.0, I'd also have to use the updated benh 2.4 Kernel. I
installed both updates, then ran "startx". The machine flickered and
kicked me back to a command prompt with "No Screens Found". When I
rebooted [shits and giggles] the machine got stuck in a loop of
flicker, flicker, flicker, one line of very small dots across the
bottom of the screen, repeat 4 or 5 times, lock up.
The second method: Installing, apt-get'ing for updates, installing
the new Kernel through rsync again, then using apt-get to install
Michael Daenzer's updated x-windows-system-core and x-window-system
packages; using apt again to install drm-trunk-module-src,
x-server-xfree86-dri-trunk, and xlibmesa3-dri-trunk. I ran dpkg a
couple times, updated the modules a couple times, and tried to
"startx" again. This time the screen actually did something
different. It displayed 8 black horizontal lines across the screen in
front of what looked like white clouds turning into purple eventually
turning into blue, a transition not unlike what you'd expect if you
pushed your finger into an LCD panel. The machine froze in that
state. I turned it off hard, only to have the end result be the same
as the end result of Method 1.
When the machine reboots I can't login. I don't know where the
interrupt sequence is to manually edit the runlevel, so I'm kinda
screwed in that regard.
Any help that anybody can provide is great, and really, I don't care
about starting all over. If I'm not doing something I should be or
I'm doing something you think I shouldn't be, please let me know.
Thanks in advance,
Nick Allen
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