Howdy folks,

I'm trying to install Debian Sarge on my pc.

Hardware
Athlon XP 3200+ stock speeds
Abit NF7-S v2
2x 512 PC3200 Mushkin Black Lvl2 in dual channel mode (relaxed 2.5-3-3-6 timings)
1x WD800BB 80GB 7200 rpm IDE hard drive primary master (XP Pro)
1x Seagate 80GB 7200 rpm IDE hard drive primary slave (Linux)
1x flippy
1x Lite On DVD+-RW secondary master
1x Lite On CDRW secondary slave
ATI X800 pro 256MB w/DVI + 2x/DSUB
Viewsonic 19" LCD VP912b -- DVI
1x three button generic optical wheelmouse PS/2
1x Microsoft Trackball Explorer USB
Zboard keyboard USB
1.5Mbit/768Kb DSL connection thru Actiontek modem/router/gateway/wafflemaker....

install methods:
DVD (x2)
online for patches

I'm to the point that I'm trying to get the video set up. After the first attempt of prompting me for mouse, keyboard, layout, video chipset, and advanced monitor settings I'm stuck. Every time I try to startx it crashes and essentially tells me "No Screens Found".

I've tried "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" a couple of times and at least once with something called 'xfree86config'. These are my attempts with the dpkg... method.

vesa X800pro
(EE) VESA(0): vm86() syscall generated signal 4.
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal serer error:
no screens found


vga X800pro
(EE) VGA(0): Driver can't support depth 24
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal serer error:
no screens found

ATI X800pro
(EE) No devices detected.

Fatal serer error:
no screens found

Changing the name from X800pro to Radeon didn't matter at all. Same thing.

I tried the medium and advanced methods for the monitor. My max resolution is 1280x1024, so I selected that one. The others were already there (1024x768, 800x600, 640x480). 24million colors. My feeble attempts at Advanced I set the horizontal frequency to 30-82 and vertical to 50-85 -- got those numbers from the Viewsonic website, listed under the 'input' frequencies.

I did omit a time or two the PCI:2:0:0 location (used lspci -X to get a usable output to use with X). So maybe there's a 1 in 2000 chance that was the problem.

I just less'd the output file ( less /var/log/XFree86.0.log ). Funny that the newest ATI chip it lists is the 9800XT. Does this mean that I have to throw in my old 9800 pro in order for this to work?

Anyway, what am I doing wrong? How do I configure my X800 pro and LCD monitor on Linux? Would appreciate input. Thx.

ß

*sigh*

so I can think of two (2) things I did different:
1) rebooted. Laugh if you must.
2) replaced X800 pro with 9800 pro.

Now it works. Thanks for reading....

ß