Re: Dexter?

[Casey@umit.maine.edu (Casey Henderson)]

Ok, I'm really getting discouraged here.  Here's the situation.  I have
a really old computer (about 5 years old), the video card is built onto
the motherboard, it's an S3 Virge with 2 Mb of video ram.  I was
successfully running XFree86 3.3.6 with the S3V server, using
horizontal refresh rate of 31.5-48.5, and vertical refresh rate 50-100.
(I'm running Debian 2.2).  This was working fine until I did an
"apt-get dist-upgrade" and inadvertently upgraded to XFree86 4.0.1 and
now X doesn't work.  
  I ran the dexter utility and selected my keyboard and mouse.  It then
asked me for the specs on my monitor, so I typed in the above refresh
rates, assuming they'd work fine.  
  Now when I boot up Linux, it says "Starting xdm..." and then it drops
me to the command prompt. (I had been using gdm, but I'm using xdm just
until I get everything working).  This never happened before.  It used
to be that it would say "Starting gdm..." and then it would take me
automatically to console 7 and I could log in at the graphical login
box.  Instead what it does now is drop me to a command prompt.  It sits
there for about 2 or 3 minutes, and then it switches to console 7.
   Now here's the weird part (or another weird part, I should say). It
appears that even though I'm using the same settings as in 3.3.6, they
don't work. When I finally get to the graphical login box, the screen
is totally messed up.  I don't believe it is a resolution problem.  The
screen is all wavy and completely unreadable.  I don't want to damage
my monitor, so I usually end up having to press control-alt-delete and
reboot.
   If anyone has gotten X 4.0.1 to work with an S3 virge, could you
lend me a hand? I'd be happy to post any config files that are
necessary. I'm really frustrated right now. I'm at the point where I
feel like wiping my system and reinstalling the old version, since my
system is virtually unusable without X.  I'm able to get online and
download packages, and I'm able to edit config files all from the
prompt, but that's about it.  Any help would be greatly appreciated. 
Thanks in advance.

Casey

--
Casey Henderson
Casey@umit.maine.edu
http://www.cs.umaine.edu/~hender97/