Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[JacquiG]

I had the final crash it looks like on my desktop last night - installing fedora and like what I see so far. Can't even safe boot into Windows.

I'm still hopeful that I can get Puppy onto my laptop. I found these 2 links and will proceed to try them and see what results I get

http://www.x.org/archive/X11R6.8.0/doc/neomagic.4.html
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=146452

I'll start with x.org since it explicately makes mention of my card (MagicGraph 128XD (NM2160)) and possible configuration considerations.

Here goes nothing!

[JacquiG]

Well, I think I'm about ready to give up. I think I messed up following the instructions in the one thread, or the changes took place but absolutely nothing has changed.

Thought I might try some other distros/installations using a boot floppy but can't mount my floppy drive on my desktop to create a boot floppy, can't boot into Windows, blahblahblah....

II guess it's time to flatten both my laptop and desktop or throw them both out the window and go buy Macs.

[muggins]

Jacqui,

not sounding very promising! How did you try installing fedora on the desktop? Is the floppy completely ratso, or only under windows? Because if the desktop had a CDR drive, and the floppy drive could boot, then you could try sbootmanager floppy to coerce a CDR to boot puppy.

[JacquiG]

Things on my desktop seem to be going ok Do I dare say it

I'm still running Puppy on my desktop. I thought I'd try Fedora using a DVD install but I've been mucking with my laptop all night I haven't been having much luck though

It ends up the floppy on my desktop was/is mounted even though the 'mount' dialog shows it's not and fails when I try to mount it. I found it was mounted only when I was exploring the file structure and saw it listed in the mnt directory. So I should be able to create a boot floppy. I was thinking it might be another way I could try to help install another distribution onto my laptop if I can't get Puppy working.

[JacquiG]

I did some more research and found some floppy drivers for my cd drive on my laptop...wow, that was long winded

I'll try it tonight and hope it works and will expand the options available to me for experimenting and getting something installed.

[JacquiG]

Found this link specific to NeoMagic chipsets that I'm hoping will help:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/neomagic.html

Since my problem has now become more specific to video I thought it might be appropriate to start a new thread:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=217839#217839

Thanks guys...you've been great (and given me hope). Can you maybe help me out over on the other thread to get my video working?

Jacqui

[harryc]

I have a Toshiba Portege 3110ct with a Trident Cyber 9525 video chipset. I've seen this particular machine mentioned several times in this thread, but it is unclear if a fix for it made it into any particular version on Puppy. I am coming here fresh off of trying to get DSL to run Xvesa unsuccessfully on this machine. Does anyone have an answer for me, or can I help in any way?

[muggins]

Hello Harryc,

unfortunately I don't think JacquiG ever found a solution to
her graphics problem. Two additional compounding
problems, with getting puppy working on her computer,
were limited RAM, and inability to get puppy to boot
from the default live CD, due to external usb CD.

Just from general forum reading, it seems some have
success getting their trident cyber graphics working,
whereas others,like JacquiG, are unsuccessful.

So how much RAM does your laptop have? And if you
can boot from a CD, that's the simplest thing to try &
see whether Puppy's xorgwizard will work for you or
not.

[rerwin]

harryc,
Puppy 4.00+ should work with it. It will force you to use xorg, which is all that works with that hardware. Be sure you have at least 128MB RAM+swap partition.

It will probably freeze during first bootup, with an instruction to press ctrl-c. Do that and then select xorg. Please report what happens. Thanks.
Richard

[harryc]

Hi Richard, thanks for the reply, Puppy 4.0 worked exactly as you've described. This has been very challenging hardware to get Linux installed on, and I've finally found a home for it at Puppy. Thank-you!

@muggins, I have 128MB RAM. I cheated a bit on the install. I physically removed my hard drive and installed it in a Thinkpad, then I installed Puppy 4.0, then I put the drive back in the Portege. It came right up after the xorg/resolution selection process.

[muggins]

Harryc,

good to hear you were successful. I think Richard did all the hard work of getting xorgwizard to recognise the tridents. I'm curious how much RAM you had though? If you open a console and type free, what does it display?

[harryc]

muggins - I have 128MB of RAM and 256MB swap.

[rerwin]

harryc,
I am pleased that puppy4 worked for you as I expected. It can be made to avoid the ctrl-c game if you can give me a bit of information to include in future puppys.

Could you post the last line of file /etc/xorgoverrides here? I can then have that added to the standard puppy. Thanks.
Richard

[harryc]

Richard, I skimmed over your post too fast and didn't pay attention to the ctrl-C. I did not have to do that. I just selected xorg, and the LCD and resolution. The last line of /etc/xorgoverrides is;
oem:Trident CYBER 8820.

[Tonny]

Hello

harryc or rerwin , can you take a look at my post?

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=33188

(problem with Trident Cyber 9382 video chipset)