I have this old laptop, and its been fairly sound in Linux since I've been using it, but recently it will not cooperate with the 2.6 kernel. It loads the kernel fine, but I can not see the console verbose anymore. The reason I know the kernel is loading ok is that the drivers load, the peripherals light-up, and then I am able to blindly login in and start up X, at which point I finally get the display back. Is there an old display driver no longer included in the 2.6 kernel that was default with the 2.4? The laptop uses a Chips and Technologies 65555 video chip. Past that, I don't really understand whats going on.

Thanks!

they, indeed, did some changes over frame buffer drivers but you should be able to use the "VESA" mode anyways (as any card since '80 support VESA anyways).

Did you compile the kernel by hand (mean, did you use the "make menuconfig or make config" to configure your kernel) or did you take some binary? I dislike packaged kernel, as they come with too much stuff you never need.

I compiled it by hand but I could have sworn I had VESA enabled... I'm about to reconfigure it and try again, wish me luck!s

enable VESA but disable all others framebuffer devices as they often conflict with the VESA one, especially (but not only) the nvidia driver. Try to make it work with VESA first then you wil have plenty of time to try something else.

Thanks, I did that an it works fine now. For some reason xterm wont open in X with the 2.6 kernel, but I remember having this problem before so I'll just play around. Is there any disadvantage to VESA? the other Chips driver kicks in with X so I don't see any glaring faults.

Thanks

-Dan

VESA is basic, so forget about 3D and such... however, it is just fine for framebuffer (textmode you know...), but it might be a good idea to take a look at Xorg drivers to use another one for X, you may find one better than VESA (Xorg drivers are separate from the kernel) that suit your card.

I don't know about Xterm, I haven't used xterm since age, sorry.

Im also having trouble with PCMCIA support, as now not sockets are recognized. In the old 2.4 kernel, there wasn't any options but in this kernel there are options for both 32bit and 16bit cards. I could have sworn that the only module used was the yenta version but thats 32bit and the laptop has sketchy 32bit card support.

Even my very old (5 yeals old) toshiba laptop support 32 bits, so your probably do, too. Just enable both options.

Well the bios support it but linux doesnt seem to like it on this particular system.. Im going off a reference from here

As the part that says there is a problem with PCMCIA is about RH 7.2 default kernel (~5 years old?) it's not very relevant, you better try by yourself and see.