I just wanted to post a solution I found to help out anyone else that is trying to put Linux on an Averatec 3200. After reading a bunch of posts I wanted to just give the simple solution.

The video card detection when you install most distros on an Averatec 3200 series laptop doesn't detect the correct driver.

The solution is pretty simple. This worked for Suse 9.1 and Fedora 4.

For Fedora 4, install in text mode. Then restart the computer. In Grub add a "3" after the <Kernel> line. Make sure you add a space before it. This boots into Runlevel 3. Then just go to the .config file and edit it using $nano xf.config or whatever your .config file is. Using nano fix the following:

Section"Device"
Identifier "videocard0"
Driver"via" (change this to "vesa")
VendorName"VIA" (change this to "VESA")
BoardName"Unichrome (KM400)"
EndSection

Now you can see the rest of the installation. Now just tweak the resolution in the display menu. No probs since. Just got yelled at for not getting enough work done though....

I hope this helps, it only took me a couple of frustrating days at work to figure out.

Take it easy.

Jus one note, the path of the file one has to make the change is /etc/X11/xorg.conf

My sound is not working thougn. The system detect the card but sound is not playing...

Have a nice day.

sound card is a via so you just have to compile it into kernel in the ALSA section under sound. the video card is recognized by some distributions like Mandrake under wich even the grafic acceleration works, under Fedora you have to install in text mode and then change the /etc/X11/xorg.conf in order to use the vesa driver. there is some material on how to get is work with via drivers on the net. if there is more of you out there wich whant to know more about linux on this laptop i can write a tutorial, wireless included. however, i still didn't get it to play online tv stations like www.tvr.ro/webcast.
Have fun guys, it's all about looking and trying.
By the way, i had 3 rma's in 10 months with this laptop (N1 & N2 - hdd, N3 - optical drive), anyone out there with the same problem?

Actually the sound is working now. The solution was pretty simple... somebody notice (not me and I do not remember the exact post) that fedora installation put to mute the external source of sound. To change it you use the alsamixer, go to external, press M to change the MM to 00 and everything goes fine. Not need to recompile anything...

Thanks for answering though...

Have a nice day.

I, as well, have an aging Averatec 3200 laptop. To date I have tried various flavors of opensuse, fedora, ubuntu, arch linux, debian, and mandriva - none of which worked.

Only two distros that I've found will work: Puppy 4.21 and Knoppix (6 i believe). Currently I am running a dual boot Knoppix and Windows XP system. Both distros worked out of the box, and quite well I might add :-)

And I have never been successful getting anything to load via USB, using unetbootin. Anything that got remotely close to loading was on a CD.

Hope that helps.