on first boot of redhat 9 my system starts ignoring the keyboard and mouse; im not sure if this is due to the system locking up completely or no..

the mouse and keyboard are detected previously, and the graphics come up for the first boot setup - the screen where you are about to setup date & time etc......

system:
180MHZ Pentium Pro
96MB EDO RAM
16MB ATI RAGE 128 video card (linux detects it flawlessly)
etc
etc....

help me

Have you tried installing it with the text based install? Might be having a hard time or locking up since it appears this is an older machine.

i didnt actually want you to say that... i finished the install in text as i recall, its just the setting up at the end, is there a way to do that crap in text?


when the graphics are loading up, i see the mouse cursor, then the keyboard and mouse will stop responding, then the rest of the screen will load the graphics for it...i think that if the machine was bogged down with too much that it would lock up complety and not continues to load the screen whatsoever...

Are you referring to the graphics that load up to install or after the install when your booting up the machine for the first time? You lost me without providing any details. If you installed in text mode, it should configure your mouse and such in text mode. Please ellaborate more on when its freezing up, etc.

These are the minimum requirements for RH 9:
The following information represents the minimum hardware
requirements necessary to successfully install Red Hat Linux 9:

CPU:

- Minimum: Pentium-class
- Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better
- Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better

Hard Disk Space (NOTE: Additional space will be required for user data):

- Custom Installation (minimum): 475MB
- Server (minimum): 850MB
- Personal Desktop: 1.7GB
- Workstation: 2.1GB
- Custom Installation (everything): 5.0GB

Memory:

- Minimum for text-mode: 64MB
- Minimum for graphical: 128MB
- Recommended for graphical: 192MB

So it looks as though your system is very under specced for a graphical desktop. This could be the problem.

it locks up when the first time screen loads up, the installation is over at that point and was done in text mode.....i dont want to load my Redhat 6.1 on it damn it....

It seems that your system is too low spec for RedHat 9 - I would suggest either upgrading your hardware or going for something that will run on a lower spec machine. Check out Distrowatch for suggestions.

I had a similar experience when installing Slackware 9.1 onto a similar hardware platform: P200/MMX, 128M, ATI Xpert 98, IBM keyboard, Logitech USB wheel mouse, ...

Problem turned out to be that last one. For some reason, the X configurator didn't like the USB mouse and X startup would hang, looking for a pointing device. I used an alternate console (Ctrl-Alt-F2) to get out of the hung X session. Eventually I plugged the mouse into the PS2 port (used a little green adapter) and it works, if brokenly, now - no wheel functionality. Gotta sort that out some day.

yes i fixed this problem and every other one i had....

this was due to my ESS audio card being defunct...i uninstalled it and everything is fine...the screen saver is going on that particular system at this very moment