Ok, I'm getting nowhere fast. Using both the text install and the gui install I have display issues. A little research on the web shows I'm not the only person to run into this, but I appear to be the only one that has no idea how to implement the "fixes" to this issue.

"use video=radeonfb" - totally lost...

"...made a new rpm with benh10, new
supermount and newer drm modules and it now works..." - huh?...

and probably the most common "fix" I come across:

"had to make sure that I was booting with the 2420-benh image, and I had to use the Xfree driver "fbdev"" - yea.......

Can someone point me in the right direction here?? This is probably the 4th thread I've started since deciding what a great idea Mandrake on my iBook is.... and I've had no luck thus far.

Always appreciated people. Having done tech support for far too long I now feel like the noobs I ripped on for asking ridiculous questions, but y'all have been great.

ok I posted a reply to one of your other posts and that may work I don't know, however, I can explain some of what you have found namely the most common "fix" you found. booting with the 2420-benh image most likeely means a kernal image thats modefied version of kernel version 2.4.20, and fbdev, is a driver/module for the gui interface, but from what I see you have to install it before you can use this image. you could try force-fbdev option on startup. still wish you good luck.

--Alex

Thanks, I actually just caught your reply to the first thread.

Get out of work in about an hour, plan to give it a shot when I get home. I've since been reading up on xfree86, and I think I might have come up with a few possible answers.

Everything I can see tells me the card is definitely supported in the latest version, specifically rv200.

It's all still greek to me at this point, there seems to be no shortage of possible fixes, I just have no idea where to start to implement them.

The plan is get home, nuke the partition, reload mandrake, and start fresh with what I've managed to acquire.

Trust me, I'll be back for more.

Thanks again.

Finally, progress.

Wiped the partition, reloaded mandrake, again struggled through the installer without even really being able to see what was going on, and im now looking at kde. Installed using benh and while it hasnt fixed my display issues, it definitely helped somewhat.

so where to go from here....

i still have to get this display thing worked out asap, and i havent tried hardwiring in yet, but my airport sure isnt working.

other than that, when linux is loading it takes FOREVER when i hit "bringing up interface eth0" and then again at eth1, what gives?

If i can get around these two issues ill be set to tinker around....

ok as for the display issue which driver do you have selected for X, and secondly do you have a NIC card installed? do you have 2? eth0 would be your first nic, probably built into your mobo, eth1 would be a second nic if you have one, if your nic isn't connected to a network sometimes when it loads eth it can take a while if you are connected on a lan or cable or router etc... check from inside a terminal window if you have connectivity, such as running

ifconfig

and if that output looks good try pinging something like yahoo....if that works Im not sure what you could do next well good luck

--Alex

ps forgot you're on Ibook you might have airport card or netoworking installed that may be your eth1 if so it's probably not connecting to anything thats the hang there, let me know

--Alex

HAPPY HOLIDAYS YALL!!!

ok, so I yet again formatted the hd on the ibook, reloaded os x and left half the disk partitioned as free space for the next attempt at loading mandrake ppc.

Aside from that, loaded mandrake 9.2 on my desktop pc without a single issue. I figured if i got to play around with a functioning version it may shed some light on the ppc for me.

Been so busy with the holidays that i havent had time to try any of the fixes to my display problem, but i think i know where im headed now.

As far as the issues with taking a loooooong time to load once i hit eth0 and eth1, scheidel21, you are correct. The first is my onboard nic and the second is my airpoirt. Still havent tried to connect via ethernet, but the airport is definitely not working, i think i might've found the resolution for that one as well.

Thanks again for the input, I'm a newbie well on his way as a result.