[PLUG] Starting X11 with a Trident video card

[George Langford <george@georgesbasement.com>]

My nVidia card died today (black screen) and so I was forced to
put in an old Trident (TVGA96PCI) video card.

The screen isn't black anymore, but lenny wants to use the nVidia
driver, and so X11 won't start.  I do have the appropriate
xserver-xorg-video-trident driver, so I've been told by
"sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-trident" but it's not
getting installed during startup.

The tail end of the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file says there isn't any
screen, which of course is absurd, as I read the log file with the
very video screen (albeit in text mode) that the log file says
isn't there.  I suppose it means there isn't any nVidia card.

I'd post this over on the debian.org forums, except that my
password resides with the nonfunctioning X11 (gnome) GUI, and my
attempts to log in meet with "your email address is already in
use" and "user email unknown" error messages.  The antispam
mechanism asks me to enter the middle number from the array:
"0 1 2 3 4 5."  I tried "23" but "3" is the correct answer.

It seems to me that some minimal form of GUI should be the default
when using a new video card.  How do I get that to activate ?
For the time being, I'd be happy to get 640 by 480 ... the Trident
card claims to be SVGA, but right now, it's text or nothing.

Thanks,
George Langford


___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug