Suse 9.1 & video card question

[Mech13]

I just could'nt wait to put my new Novell supplied Suse 9.1 DVD in something so since I didn't have a DVD in my desktop I installed it in my Dell Inspiron 8200. All went pretty well. After reading a few posts I decided to let the install program do it's thing. It went without a hitch except it said it could not make a separate boot partition but that did not seem to inhibit the install. All went without a hitch except I can't change my screen size from 640X480, when I do the screen wigs out and is unreadable. I am suspecting this is because I have an ATI Radeon card installed and don't have the right drivers in Suse. Is this a correctable situation for a noob or am I stuck until I learn quite a bit more? Thanks in advance.

[Ned Slider]

I'm just guessing here, so bare with me Mech, but I would have thought it more likely the installation routine hasn't correctly identified your display.

The radeon driver is built into the kernel and should work just fine (unless it's some obscure mobile implimentation). When I installed Fedora on my laptop, it couldn't recognise the LCD panel so I just selected generic 1024x768 LCD display from the list and it worked.

See if there is a display utility anywhere in suse where you can tell it you have a 1024x768 LCD display, or whatever the native resolution of your display is. Once you've got that set, then see if you can change the resolution.

Also, might be helpful to post your Xorg (XFree86??) config file.

Ned

[Mech13]

Thanks Ned, you are probably getting tired of helping me. I will get better.... really. You are right it is ID'ing the monitor as unknown. However I am having a hard time finding where to change that situation in YaST ( I am only guessing it is there somewhere). I will keep searching. As for my Xorg config file, I have no clue as to how to get that. Thanks for the help.

[Ned Slider]

Hey, no problem at all Mech, we're all here to help each other. And besides, people probably got sick of me when I started out

The first problem I can't help you with as I've never used SuSe (yet!). But yes, look for something that looks like it will allow you to check/change display or monitor settings.

If Suse uses Xorg (rather than XFree), then the config file is called xorg.conf and should be in /etc/X11 (although it could be hiding elsewhere). Post the "Monitor", "Device" and "Screen" sections as this may help diagnose the problem.

I think you might have to wait for one of our resident X experts though as I'm probably about as lost as you when it comes to troubleshooting X.

Ned

[Spankin Partier]

Yeah, it sounds like the refresh rate is too high. Maybe you could select a generic monitor that supports the required res you need, but only at a lower refresh rate.

[Mech13]

Thanks for the help. I finally figured it out. For some reason it wouldn't initially accept my 1600 res TFT. So, I just started picking lower smaller res devices it would accept then reboot and pick another. Each subsequent pick allowed a better monitor unil it finally accepted what I had. Life is good again, the Suse install seems to be working properly every where else except my wireless Netgear card, which is no big deal since I have plenty of CAT 6 to string to my laptop. As I get more proficient maybe I will try and figure that out.