Text-mode(alike) when booting Live CD

[Calmatory]

I am getting text-mode(alike) menu instead of graphical one when booting with Live-CD. Is this because of 1MB(Or maybe even 2MB! ) ISA video card? Or is there another explanation? Well, anyway I can't boot to desktop, it hangs during booting. Xubuntu 7.10 does it aswell (obviously). The motherboard is P6LX-A+ by Elitegroup and has Intel i440LX AGP(!! ) chipset.

Edit: Ok, I confirmed it with Dell Dimension XPS R400 and the same ISA video card, same issue occurs.

BTW, the booting hangs when starting local scripts or something. With this Dell it works perfectly, with 2 different motherboards it doesn't, while both have same video card. So out of 3 motherboards only one works. Despite all of these have (almost) the same chipset (2x i440BX 1x i440LX). I believe it is an issue with device recognizion/not supported device or something. Well, I don't really care but incase someone was interested.

[Husse]

??
ISA video card! One, or two MB video memory!
You bet you'll have problems
Say you use 800x600 as resolution and a color depth of 16 bits
Lets see 800*600*16 is 7680000 i.e about 7.3 MB....
But do you really use an ISA card?

[900i]

Dig that CRAZY retro graphics card man

[Calmatory]

??
ISA video card! One, or two MB video memory!
You bet you'll have problems
Say you use 800x600 as resolution and a color depth of 16 bits
Lets see 800*600*16 is 7680000 i.e about 7.3 MB....
But do you really use an ISA card?

You calculated it wrong. I am not entirely sure does it actually have 2 MB or 1 MB of memory, it has 4 chips (2x2 "grid") an has 2 emtpy "slots", which read "xxx512kxxx". I assume that the 6 chips are 256k each, totalling the capacity to 1MB, and if it had the 2 chips more, the capacity would be 2 MB total.

Remember the difference between BYTE and BIT. One BYTE is 8 BITS, usually. Your equation shows the amount of BITS the 800x600x16 takes, not the amount of actual BYTES it takes. Thus, you need to divide your results by 8 to get the right amount of BYTES. Or then compare that 7.3MBITS against 8MBITS the VGA card has.
Oh, besides I have ran 1280x1024x32 with 4MB card. It shouldn't be possible, but with WindowsXP's default drivers it really was possible. It didn't work flawlessly though, since I got some problems with it, like the some last pixels (which were assigned AFTER the 4MB went full) "streched" the screen from left to right by a small margin, it wasn't really noticeable if it wasn't paid attention.

Well yeah, the problem really WAS the ISA card, as I assumed. Now I got GeForce4 MX 4000 plugged in the AGP-bus and it works flawlessly.

And yes, I really used an ISA card! I need PCI soudcard, but I got 2 ISA cards. ...and I won't plug them in the machine! Never ever more ISA cards for me.

Edit: Oh, the ISA VGA had it's warranty expired over 13 years ago. (1/1/1995)

[Husse]

I must have been really tired when I forgot to divide by 8
Damn, I thought I ended up a little high om memory
Trust me I know the difference between bits and bytes
My first PC (a gift from my computer geeky stepson on my 50th birthday) used a vesa graphics card with "not much" memory and RAM was at 24 MB (or 16??)

[MagnusB]

:oops:
I must have been really tired when I forgot to divide by 8
Damn, I thought I ended up a little high om memory
Trust me I know the difference between bits and bytes
My first PC (a gift from my computer geeky stepson on my 50th birthday) used a vesa graphics card with "not much" memory and RAM was at 24 MB (or 16??)

I always mess up the difference between bits and bytes.. Never remember what is 8 and what is 1. And MiB and MB STILL confuse me at times!

[mcurran]

I have a nVIDIA GeForce4 MX graphics card and have enabled the nv restricted drivers, which allow all desktop effects with the exception of the water effect and fire effect to work. I tried to install the nVidia drivers with package manager, because I cannot run most 3D games with the nv driver. I can play games like Planet Penguin Racer, but the snow is black. Alien Arena, Open Arena, and Stellarium cause my computer to practically crash (blank-black screen with only the sound working), in which case I need to restart x in order to do anything. I have also tried the nVIDIA-glx-legacy drivers and nVIDIA-glx-new drivers, which still didn't run the games, and moreover, could not get my preferred resolution to work (1024X768). I know this card is capable of running the aforementioned games, because I got my ATI 3D Rage Pro LT (Mach64 chipset) to open Alien Arena, and that card is ancient. Does anyone use this card, and have the option to run any 3D games affectively, along with desktop effects enabled? If so, could you please give me some hints. I'm a little hesitant to try the legacy drivers again, because it took so long to get everything working the way it is now. Envy says my card is not compatible with any of the drivers it's currently offering.

Also, Clem or Husse: If you read this, please bump up my status a little, I have about 6 months experience and think I deserve a notch or two. I've helped a few and have moved from a noob to at least novice user.

[Husse]

please bump up my status a little

If by that you men the little bar under your nick it grows with the number of posts you make
Anyway I have a computer with Athlon 1700, ASUS mobo with KT266, GF4 MX440SE, 512MB, 115GB IDE disk (separate nic I think) as reserve and I just installed restricted driver in Elyssa beta031* without problem - I can't remember if there were problems on the other 8 distros installed on that box, but it works fine
*Yeah I know it's not out yet...

[mcurran]

Thanks, Husse. Yes, I have had, and still do have the restricted drivers running exclusively and am able to have the pretty destop effects. I was just wondering if this card is capable of running any of the 3D games in the Software Portal, like the one's I mentioned having problems with. Apparently the restricted drivers can't power them... Or maybe it's just the card. I think I'll give the other nvidia drivers a shot again, since I can then figure out how to enable the desktop affects with those running, which will probably be less involved than working with the restricted drivers for games. I think I have the same card you have.

Anyways, can you run any of those games? Wondering if you have a couple edits in xorg to unlock more features with the restricted drivers.

My new Asus G1Sn-B1 is coming any day, and according to Clem, Elyssa is going to have EnvyNG defaulted, so that should solve all my gaming needs in Linux anyway. Can't wait. Just hoping NG will have support for mobile chipsets, like my 9500m GS. I'm sure there'll be lot of kinks to work out, but I actually enjoy fixing these things more than just using my computer for its normal purpose

[Husse]

The capacity is limited and you also need to use the legacy driver.
Any game with more 3D than you had around 2000 or 2001 (can't really remember) will not work - the 440 simply is not powerful enough