Help! Lilo and display difficulties.

[RedAlpha3]

Having installed Slackware on an old box I am having difficulties with the monitor display at boot-up. I installed lilo in the MBR.

When I start my computer, I get the usual graphics card information, then the bios information, and then the screen goes blank. No screen giving me a choice of installed distributions, nothing at all. Pressing 'return' allows me to boot into the invisibly highlighted distro and eventually the screen returns with the remnants of the start-up information and starts normally.
I have cross-checked the hardware involved and found nothing. I can only assume that it is lilo in some way that has altered the screen output. I'm most unsure.

Anyone any ideas or experience of this?

[danieldk]

Do you happen to have the framebuffer enabled? If so, you could hold shift, select the default kernel, and add the "vga=normal" parameter on the prompt.

[RedAlpha3]

I will try this Daniel, thanks.

[RedAlpha3]

No luck, I'm afraid. There is a complete blank in the display after the bios screen. If you put a bootable cd in it there is no screen output at all until it is well into the booting process! Most odd!

[RedAlpha3]

Phew! Managed to sort this. It was a hardware failure, either the monitor, or cabling to the monitor. have to sort that now! Isn't it odd how one often feels one has "done something" to the system when it is a straightforward component fault?

[jjmac]

>>
either the monitor, or cabling to the monitor
>>

Could understand it if it was the monitor failing ....

But it seems it only effected that initial stage of startup ...

Would be interesting to know just what it turned out to be :)


jm

[RedAlpha3]

The monitor is a TFT 17" and has rather a unique cable (which I am not able to replace. I swapped the monitor with my son's CRT and the problem moved from my computer to his. As I am forever messing about with my system and he has a straightforward Ubuntu setup we have a degree of compatibility as his computer works well enough and mine does too. I really don't understand this at all, and googling (for hours!) hasn't upturned anything. I have absolutely no idea what is wrong! Any ideas at all?

[jjmac]

Hullow RedAlpha3


I just did a google on 'TFT Monitors', and briefly looked at one link ...

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-tft-monitor.htm

It does mention some interesting points, especially the problem of 'dead pixels'.

I have noticed from many display problem posts involving TFT Monitors that the actual resolution that is going to be used, in relation to the clock and refresh rate that X is going work with ... needs to be very specific in terms of the particular monitor.

It may well be hanging on that, and then X may be attempting different probed config patterns. And as you say it comes good, i guess it must be eventually finding it.

The 'specific resolution/refresh' setting mention above is non-speculative, but the statement on what X may be doing is very much so.

As it is an old monitor i guess the manual isn't available. You could set up a specific 'ModeLine' in X if that was so.

Also, with old monitors, when using a manual 'ModLine' config it is best to under spec a bit to take into count any ware in the monitor. At least initially.



But i figure your problem has more to do with the following,


>>
and has rather a unique cable (which I am not able to replace.
>>

Now there's an ominous statement, why is it unique ? the plug i would expect ....

Has it been crimped in some way?!!. You may have a break somewhere that is causing an intermittent loss of current/earth leak !

Something like that could result in the scenario you describe. Also, dust/oxidations on the pins will also result in such a condition. Contamination carried by humidity will electro statically find its' way to your pins.

A cotton bud, suitably shaped, and some 'Isopro' Alcohol will clean them.

Correct name : 'Isopropyl Alcohol'.

Found in any electronics shop. It tends to be wet, so some care needs to taken to make sure everything has dried/evaporated before plugging things back in.

If that gives no joy, you may have a break in the cable somewhere, or the monitor may be failing.

In any case, as the problem migrated with the monitor, at least you know where it lies. There not exactly cheap buggers to buy either, at least not here in .au

When it comes to obscure hardware there are probably only two things that can be done, except for net searches (ebay ?)

# A smallish basement styled computer shop, full of stuff. Full of boxes of legacy components. The staff usually actually know something about computers which is always good :)

# Computer markets !, basically for the same reasons as mentioned above...

Don't throw the Monitor, you never know ... it might reveal something in the future, say you do stumble apone a cable ... if it isn't there any more it can't be tested.

In any case, no offence if all the above has been tried/considered. But it's about all i can think of ...

Good Luck,


jm

[RedAlpha3]

Hi jm

Thanks for the link. Interesting. The monitor is the better of the two TFT monitors I've aquired, in resolution. It has no dead pixels at all, that I've found. I'll have a go at cleaning up the plugs and sockets with alcohol. I think that the lead has been kinked at some time but finding a replacement is not easy, though I haven't given up. I don't know about anyone else, but with hardware problems I work on the substitution method of testing. I have been known to get out the odd cotton bud too.

What confused me was that I'd just installed Slackware (I do it every so often so that I can get back to basics!) and lilo. I was sure that lilo had done something to the MBR. (Lilo and I have a hate-hate relationship). I tried to sort that for a while before "Hardware Fault" flashed into my head.

Don't know about your neck of the woods, but over here we have "Computer Fairs". Often held in large sports halls they have lots of stalls selling kit ranging from new systems, software, hardware to second-hand 286's etc and mixed cables. Will scour these on Saturday to see what I can find.

Thanks

[fos]

Hi Pete,

When I lived in Florida, we had "computer fairs" at least once per month where you could find very good deals if you knew the market well. Here in Houston, TX, the computer shows are quite rare.

I am still using my Gateway VX1120 el grande monitor with a Sony CRT. The resolution is great and it is large enough for my low vision eyes to see clearly with a fair amount of magnification.

One of these days I'm going to purchase a solid state monitor but it isn't a high priority.

fos....

[jjmac]

Howdy All,

To divert slightly :)


RedAlpha3 wrote:

>>
What confused me was that I'd just installed Slackware (I do it every so often so that I can get back to basics!) and lilo. I was sure that lilo had done something to the MBR. (Lilo and I have a hate-hate relationship). I tried to sort that for a while before "Hardware Fault" flashed into my head.
>>

Lilos' benign but i tend to notice that booting is little understood generally. So many people just go with the defaults and install the Lilo/Grub first stage to their MBRs. Overwriting a perfectly good bootstrapper in the process. Seems to be an inclusion with all the 'i just installed Linux to dual boot with win and now i can't boot win' problems.

The MBR bootstrap is __not__ a boot loader ... it's a partition table reader :).

A dedicated boot partition with a Lilo/Grub first stage installed on its' boot sector, or on the boot sector of a primary-extended, or on the boot sector of their Linux root solves most of those problems. And is cleaner. And is also more 'Unix Like'

In any case, hope your monitor problem gets fixed and would be interested to see how it unfolds.

If Lilo/Grub was behind any thing it wouldn't be a screen problem. It would just be a hang problem at some stage during the boot.

fos wrote:
>>
I am still using my Gateway VX1120 el grande monitor with a Sony CRT. The resolution is great and it is large enough for my low vision eyes to see clearly with a fair amount of magnification.
>>

I use a 17 inch NEC MultiSync C500, from 1997. And my eye are shot to bits as well. I was wondering about your thoughts on tiny fonts.

I was experimenting with ubuntu 6.06 LiveCD/installer yesterday and liked the idea of having a dual LiveCD/installer in one. And i liked the way the LiveCD utilised all my ram. It ran with gnome very smoothly. So i think i will be stripping it down to use as a recovery LiveCD facility ... for that reason.

Aside from the total lack of being able to customise at the boot stage, via cli options ... which i find to be a very bad trend that seems to be going on with Linux distros these days. The default 10 pxl fonts that i was presented with drove me to total distraction. Along with no choice to configure X. I had to copy my xorg.conf file over to solve that. And i wont even mention not being allowed to do an initial console boot. Getting out of gdm (ha), talk about 'round robbin'. Had to kill gdm and delete the rc2.d symlink. Which caused the exit to the console to hang, requiring a ctl-alt-F1 to fix. gdm had a child which held things up.

But the fonts !!!!. Why do they think 10 pxl is a good default !!!
I had to get a magnifying glass out to find the fonts menu item in the system menu to make an adjustment. Do the developers all do their stuff on big 30 inch screens (Macs ?).


Next LiveCD boot, same story will unfold. Why do they taint an otherwise good effort, aside from thinking i can't handle making simple initial config decisions. Or that i don't want to ... Why do they taint that with insanely small, unreadable (unless you are an ant) fonts !!!

Does that effect you by chance ?. Just going by your mention of 'low vision eye'

I never here of any one really mentioning anything on this ... it can't just be me. Or are people just so well <cough> trained </cough> to accept that as normal ...

Just thinking on the bliss of eye stained, acute, head aches :)

PS:

How come my loging drops out when i open a new page, or let an exiting page sit for a while. As when writing a post. I just happened then (again)

:)


jm