annoying problem with TFT on dell laptop

[Shri Shrikumar <shri@urbyte.com>]

Hi,

I have spent the last few hours installing debian testing on a brand new
dell inspiron laptop and have managed to get it very close to working
properly. I am however, having two problems that are throwing me off
both to do with the display.

The first is that every second time I load linux up, it shrinks the
screen size to the center. I have a 15" screen but it only uses the
center (maybe 12" or something - looked like 640x480 or something). When
I reboot, the bios post screen is *also* this size and so is the grub
screen. 

However, when it goes into linux the next time, it will resize it to the
proper size. This just keeps on alternating. I have built a kernel
(2.4.20) manually (make bzImage) and I can post the config if anyone is
interested. I am *not* using a framebuffer device. The display card is
an NVidia Geforce 2

The second problem that I am having may or may not be related to the
above and is that once the xserve-xfree86 has been run, the consoles 1-6
dont display properly anymore - there is serious flicker there. I wonder
if this might even damage the TFT.

I also noticed that installing xserver-xfree86 did not install all of
the necessary files that we necessary like xfonts-base and
xbase-clients. Would this just be because I was silly in running 


apt-get install xserver-xfree86

instead of using dselect ?

Has anyone met with the strange behaviour of the TFT before ? One thing
to mention is that I used 2.2.20-idepci kernel to boot the installation
and compile the new kernel all the time with no problems with screen
shrinking or anything like that. I did not however, run the xserver on
that so cant say if the terminal display corruption is due to the new
kernel.

I am sure that I have enabled an option that I shouldnt have or not
enabled on I should have but having recompiled it a few times, havent
found the right combination.

Any and all help or pointers very much appreciated.

Thank you for your time,



Shri