Hi there. I have a qzd computer with a display resolution of 800x480. I have tried running knoppix 6.2 but it comes up saying undefined mode 317 and attempts to find the correct resolution but does not succeed. I have tried the cheatcode extension of screen=800x480 depth=24 as well as fb800x480 to no avail. I have also loaded knoppix 5.1 that works in a resolution of (I think) 640x480 but I want to use the latest version with the correct resolution. Actually I would prefer a version of linux that runs off usb stick (as the flash drive is kaput!) But the closest I've got is opensuse in text mode. The graphics card is a z9 xgi that seems to be no longer supported and must admit after numerous attempts at trying to configure it, failed! Any help much appreciated...

The Xorg driver for the XGI Volari Z9 exists but XGI left the consumer market and apparently Ian Romanick doesn't care (anymore) for updating xf86-video-xgi. This says that as a last resort you could manually configure it to use the VESA or Sis (xf86-video-sis) driver but beware posts like this (Z9s) and this (Z7) seem to illustrate pretty good what trouble you get into being forced to compile such a driver. If that doesn't sound promising you could check if any major distro's support the XGI Z9 and migrate to that?

Thanks for that. I'm just wondering where I can find compilation instructions for the xf86-video-xgi source files?

I have figured out that you need to run the autoconf program on the configure.ac file but it is now saying that I need xorg-macros 1.8 or higher and despite installing all the development files for xorg it is still not there. Any help much appreciated...

I would really, really suggest you try a distribution that comes with xf86-video-xgi like OpenSuSE, Arch, Gentoo, Slackware or Fedora (might be others too). As those are well-maintained and supported it would be way, way easier to fix any problems from only having to configure X11/X.Org rather than to have to go through the whole build cycle first too. As the The X.Org Modular Tree User's Guide tells you the build macros are at git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/util/macros.