liveCD- X fails on AMD64 with VIA graphics

[bohu]

I have an ASUS motherboard with AMD 64 processor, VIA unichrome S3 graphics chip. When booting the live CD, X fails to load. X output says that no screens are found. Same thing happens with safe mode. Also happens with Ubuntu/Xubuntu 32 bit live CD but not with Ubuntu 64 bit live CD.

[Monk]

Might as well add mine too.
Installing Mint is easy on my older system with an Nvidia GPU.
On my newer system (3200 with ATI GPU) X seems to malfunction: the screen stays black during install.

I looked through the help files, but is there a way to boot from a prompt. I know there is and have tried it, but the options don't prevent mint to go into grafical mode which seems to be impossible during boot. I'm guessing the ATI gpu is the problem. Anyone managed to do this ?

I know that ubuntu beryl has the opportunity to do this with a special cdrom. Is this also possible for Mint ?

If not I'll be buying myself another Nvidia GPU and will never buy ATI again

Monk.

[bohu]

That reminds me, I have an nVidia card sitting in a box. I'll pop it in and see what happens.

[bohu]

I popped in my nVidia card, changed the BIOS and now Mint will boot and install. But the graphics are really choppy. Xorg installed the vesa driver - I don't know why. Will try switching to nv.

I guess the VIA graphics chip is why Mint would not boot before.

[Monk]

Using an Nvidia is just a workaround, I'm still curious if others have tried to install Mint in console-mode until they were able to switch to vesa-drivers ?

Monk.