Installer does not detect video card (not an X issue)

From: Phony Account (phaccount_at_nycap.rr.com)
Date: 02/03/05 

Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 01:46:16 GMT

Hi,

I am installing Fedora Core 3 on a Dell Precision 330.
Video card is a Diamond Fire GL2 with a rather old BIOS.

(The PC was rebooted with the distribution CD, and I was prompted for
the type of installation. However, no partitioning yet, language
selection, ...)

So, just before the actual installation, I see a message that the video
card was not detected (the monitor, kbd and mouse are) and that the
installation is going ``headless''. It then proceeds without incident
to partition, install packages.

When the system reboots for the first time (this is when I'll set up the
users, etc), I briefly see a Fedora splash screen, then the usual kernel
boot messages, and _then_ the screen goes wild: on a blue background
reddish diagonal stripes march across the screen.

I am not in X at that point. X has not been configured yet. I can
ctrl-alt-del to reboot. But ctrl-alt-backspace, ctrl-alt-F2 don't work.

I tried booting to run-level three to go to a text mode only by
specifying init 3 at the end of the boot kernel command. The os loader
is GRUB. But the same thing happened again.

Not knowing a thing about hardware, (and just slightly more about Linux)
I am wondering if the video card bios is too old and cannot respond to
the probing by the installer.

Also, according to the same conspiracy theory, during the boot process,
the video card gets wierd signals because its bios is out of date and
throws garbage to the monitor.

And it is not a monitor issue. I have tried two.

But I seriously hope that it will not come to installing a new bios,
because I currently don't have a usable system, and using the rescue
mode from the install media to reach across the network to grab the
drivers which I downloaded to a windows machine seems like a great
project for my retirement. Right now, I need a working machine.

Thanks for any suggestion,

Mirko

attached mail follows:

Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 00:52:39 GMT

Hi,

I am installing Fedora Core 3 on a Dell Precision 330.
Video card is a Diamond Fire GL2 with a rather old BIOS.

(The PC was rebooted with the distribution CD, and I was prompted for
the type of installation. However, no partitioning yet, language
selection, ...)

So, just before the actual installation, I see a message that the video
card was not detected (the monitor, kbd and mouse are) and that the
installation is going ``headless''. It then proceeds without incident
to partition, install packages.

When the system reboots for the first time (this is when I'll set up the
users, etc), I briefly see a Fedora splash screen, then the usual kernel
boot messages, and _then_ the screen goes wild: on a blue background
reddish diagonal stripes march across the screen.

I am not in X at that point. X has not been configured yet. I can
ctrl-alt-del to reboot. But ctrl-alt-backspace, ctrl-alt-F2 don't work.

I tried booting to run-level three to go to a text mode only by
specifying init 3 at the end of the boot kernel command. The os loader
is GRUB. But the same thing happened again.

Not knowing a thing about hardware, (and just slightly more about Linux)
I am wondering if the video card bios is too old and cannot respond to
the probing by the installer.

Also, according to the same conspiracy theory, during the boot process,
the video card gets wierd signals because its bios is out of date and
throws garbage to the monitor.

And it is not a monitor issue. I have tried two.

But I seriously hope that it will not come to installing a new bios,
because I currently don't have a usable system, and using the rescue
mode from the install media to reach across the network to grab the
drivers which I downloaded to a windows machine seems like a great
project for my retirement. Right now, I need a working machine.

Thanks for any suggestion,

Mirko

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