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From: engelsma@golden.cps.msu.edu (Jonathan Engelsma (Reid))
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: [386BSD] screen goes blank!
Message-ID: <1lghbb$eoo@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Date: 12 Feb 93 15:56:27 GMT
Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd
Organization: Michigan State University, CPS Department
Lines: 46
NNTP-Posting-Host: golden.cps.msu.edu
A friend of mine recently purchased a new 386DX with 8M RAM, 200M HD,
ATI Vantage graphics card, and a SVGA monitor. He partitioned the drive
into a 80M DOS partition and a 120M 386BSD partition. He installed
386BSD fine, was able to boot etc. About a week later I tried to
install Xfree86 for him, but got stuck trying to figure out the
settings in the Xconfig file. I ran out of time that day, and have
yet to get back and finish. Before I left, I made sure the machine
was booting off the original kernel.
The problems started the next day. He was running 386BSD, and suddenly
the screen goes completely blank. When he tried to reboot, the machine
would not boot off floppy or HD. It just gives some error indicator
which according to the manual indicates 'error reading video RAM'. He
took the machine back to the local shop where he bought it. They tried
the video board in another machine and were able to demonstrate that it
works fine. They suspected the mother board was faulty, and replaced
it. They booted 386bsd several times from the HD and all seemed fine,
so he took it home. He needed to run DOS, so the first thing he did
was change the active partition to DOS and booted DOS off the HD. Aprox
2 hours later (he was still running DOS), bingo - the screen goes blank...
same exact problem. Machine doesn't boot off floppy or HD anymore.
Of course the shop he bought it from has barely heard of Unix let alone
386BSD, and seem inclined to believe that the problem is the software
and not theirs.
I'm not sure what to think anymore. Since he was running DOS the second
time the problem occured, it seems like it can't be anything to do with
the 386bsd software residing on a different partition. Could I have damaged
the monitor or the graphics card trying to run X without having the Xconfig set
correctly? If so, why did it work for a couple hours after replacing
the mother board? The graphics board worked fined in another machine
though. Maybe the monitor is the problem?
If anybody out there has any comments, suggestions, hints, etc. please
share them with us.
Thanks,
Jonathan
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Jonathan R. Engelsma Michigan State University
Department of
E-mail: engelsma@cps.msu.edu Computer Science
uunet!frith!engelsma
uunet!frith!jresys!engelsma (home)
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