PowerBook 1Ghz 15" installation woes!

[Francis Pressland <solohorn@mac.com>]

Hi!

First let me say a big thanks to those of you who helped me with my initial
questions about getting X running on my PowerBook and my keyboard mapping
problems! 

I am however not much further down the line so I'll describe what I can get to
work first, then explain what happened after each attempt at getting futher.

I installed woody from the first CD, which I downloaded using jigdo on my PC in
Jan. 

I can get a working system with an albeit rather minumal German keyboard
support. Tilde, square brackets pipe and ampersand are VERY difficult to find,
but I can cope for now.

I tried updating the kernel using rsync to get the enh-kernel tree. I managed to
complile a stock kernel withoutchanging any settings in menuconfig, but this
results in completely useless keyboard after rebooting. I tried using the us
keyboard as default on a woody install because I read somewhere that non US
keyboards caused problems, but got the same result when I compiled the kernel.

So my first question is, how can I upgrade to the latest kernel and have my
german keyboard work?

AFTER giving up on the kernel for the time being, I decided to try and get the
XFree86 installed to work with the standard woody kernel. After a lot of
fiddling looking for the tilde symbol, I mamnaged to add the link to Daenzer's X
installation in my apt sources.list and installed them without a problem,
however after doing a startx, all I got was a black screen with a blurred white
horizonal line about an inch from the bottom of my screen! This persisted after
re-booting.

I used 40-40 as horizontal snc and 40-120 as vertical, which I believe are the
correct settings for my 15" 1280x854 screen, but I may hae that wron I suppose!

Apart from that I didn't  change any settings from the default.

So... my second question si how I get X running :-)

I am unfortunately not an expert, and although I have a passing understanding of
how to adjust the XF86Config-4 file, I really don't feel confident in this area,
so please bear that in mind when giving any information on this!

Sorry if I am asking too many "newbie" questions, however, once I finally get it
all to work, I'll write a short FAQ on how to get the 15" 1Ghz PowerBook to
owrkmwith Debian. At least there are only a few different Apple variations out
there. Its much more of of as "plug and pray" situation with a PC!! although
oddly enough I have never had so many problems installing Debian on a PC!!


Thanks for reading this "tome", any help gratefully received!!


Frank