scrambled display
 

Here I sit at one of my friends computers, trying to convert her from M$ window$ but what happend I dont think is very encouraging, the computer is as follows

emachines etower 400i3
intel celeron 400
96mb ram
4.3gb hd
40x cdrom
ati 3d rage pro 4mb

Im using a knoppix 3.2 disk that I know that works, but the display is all out of whack, the computer and monitor work fine under windows, but after the first screen of the knoppix boot (after the boot option) everything turns to a horizontal blur. There are about 7 and a half penguins across the top of the screen!!! what can I do? Im hopeless Im not sure what to do.

whats happenning is knoppix is detecting the capabilities of the video card, finding the best mode it can and displaying it on the monitor, unfortunately the monitor cant handle that resolution but instead of admitting this and turning off, it is trying to display it anyway(a feature of old monitors) the problem is easy enough to replicate in windows by setting the screen mode to a too high resolution(1024x768 on my old monitor) the solution is to tell knoppix what screen resolution you want which i guess you can do by giving it boot options.

i dont know how far you'll get though, i dont think knoppix is very forgiving to old hardware.

thanks

Ampex189