Debian Etch 4.0 on powerbook g3 pismo

gnu4us · 10-02-2007, 08:58 AM

Hello all, I am new to the forum and to linux in general. Here is my first question. I have installed Debian Etch 4.0 on my Apple Powerbook G3 (pismo). After completing the installation and restarting the computer, I seem to have a problem with getting the right screen resolution. Does anyone know how I can set the system to identify the right video card? I think that may be the problem.

indienick · 10-02-2007, 09:44 AM

You have to research, and find out which kind of video controller is used in the Powerbook G3. Since Apple systems' hardware, for the most part was proprietary, they never listed the particular graphics card on the box.

A quick Google search should be able to tell you what graphics card is in the laptop, though. After that, it's just finding out what driver to use.

samael26 · 10-02-2007, 10:38 AM

Generally, to set up the proper resolution, you have to open a terminal, become root and type :

Code:

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

This will give you the list of existing drivers you can choose between. The most basic one is "vesa".
You may have an ati card, so in that case choose "radeon" or "ati"
If it's a nvidia, choose "nv"
cheers

gnu4us · 10-03-2007, 04:20 AM

Thank you, that worked. It's all good now.

cupofnestor · 10-10-2007, 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by samael26

Generally, to set up the proper resolution, you have to open a terminal, become root and type :

Code:

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

This will give you the list of existing drivers you can choose between. The most basic one is "vesa".
You may have an ati card, so in that case choose "radeon" or "ati"
If it's a nvidia, choose "nv"
cheers

I had a similar problem. I ran reconfigure as you suggested and noticed a few things out of place. the most glaring problem was that the PCI address was autodetected incorrectly as PCI:0:16:0. I did #lspci and found my device on PCI:0:10:0. However, once I reset this, Xserver failed to start because it found no device at the the old (0:16:0) address. Did my configure fail to take? What am I doing wrong?