I have an old Compaq Workstation 5000 , it was running Mandrake 9.1 fine, but I decided to wipe it and install Debian v3.0.

No matter what flavor I choose I get the above message at the end of the installation. I go into the configure section and no matter what I do in here makes no difference.

The VGA is a Matrox Power something or other.

It's only an old spare machine that I have lying around but I'd like to see Debian before I choose whether to put Mandrake back on it or not.....

I'm sure someone must have had this kind of problem before so if anyone can help...............

Matrox is supported, so if you could hunt up the exact model of your video card, it would help. Have you tried to configure X using Xf86config? It lists all cards that are supported, so you can go there and check if your particular card is supported. If you get full details, people here will be able to help you.

Also, please post the full error message. It will help in finding what is wrong.
Regards,
Maidros

You can read the full error messages by doing 'nano /var/log/XFree86.0.log'. The lines that are interesting start with (EE).

I remember someone in this forum pointing out a couple of days ago that there's a package called xdebconfigurator that can be installed to help in configuring X. Haven't tried that myself but it might be worth a try.

If you already have a working network connection, use 'su' command to get super user privileges and use apt-get or aptitude to install xdebconfigurator. Then do 'xdebconfigurator --help' to see how you can use that program.

If you haven't yet configured APT, you can do (as super user) 'apt-setup'. Also, you must update APT before you start installing packages. Either do (as super user) 'apt-get update' or run 'aptitude' and press the 'u' key on the keyboard. Aptitude is a GUI frontend for apt-get.

Also, you can do 'apt-get moo' to discover the Super Cow Powers of APT. (It's just a joke.)

try dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

or if that already is installed, then
Make sure to select sensible values for everything, especially select No to the question Use kernel framebuffer device interface.

type lspci -v for details on the PCI devices in your machine