I'm trying to install Debian 3.0 on my system and run KDE (or any desktop manager for that matter), but it won't start X, KDE, Gnome, whatever. I have two monitors and two graphics cards (nVidia Riva 128 and S3 Trio 64, both old I know). The Riva displays nothing while the Trio has just text. When I try running xdm or gdm, the screen "flashes" all black and the text on the screen but nothing else happens; nothing happens with kdm period. I can't configure XFree86 (or at least I don't think I can) as the screen looks strange when I try to do so. Somehow I've managed to get a message say "No screen detected" (or something like that).

I'm guessing there is a problem with the driver, but I haven't been able to find what driver to use with the card (the Trio). I have the XF86Config file available if needed.

How do I get it to use both monitors (I know the driver for the Riva is available during install)? Also, when I tried to install RedHat 9 to see if my computer just didn't like Debian, the install just kinda died on me.

I can tell you that a multi monitor system under Debian works running one on Debian Sarge with a Geforce 2 and a nice Matrox Mystique.

I would advice you to get it running on one screen and simply ignoring the 2nd card for the beginning then later adding the 2nd screen in the xf86conf4.

Here is a good tutorial on how to do it
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Xinerama-HOWTO/

Hope it helps

Yeah, I removed the S3 Trio 64 from my system to see if that would help. Evidently not. I ran the text-based config thing to getting it working with just the one card. Still, xdm, gdm, and kdm all just make the screen do the weird blink/flash/flicker thing but nothing changes. When I do xdm or gdm, it takes me to the graphical configuration, but playing tih that doesn't fix it. When I did startx the error it has is:

(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

Any ideas?