I have an old piece of shit laying around and I want to run Fluxbox on Slackware on it. I can install and run Slackware fine but I can't for the love of me configure X. The annoying thing about it is that everytime I try a new configuration it will switch screen modes and will show me an empty black screen and I lose control. Ctrl-alt-backspace doesn't work nor does any other key combo, I know 'cause I smashed the keyboard into the wall..... But I don't think it crashed, the num-lock key still responds.

Anyway, my question is is there a way to test the video settings and have the thing switch back to text mode after a few seconds? That would save the keyboard and myself from a lot of pain. I hhhaaaatttteee rebooting, especially on that old timer.

Thanks in advance for any response...

ssh into it from another box on your network

or make a script that does a "killall -9 X" every minute or so and run it in the background

It isn't connected (yet). But thanks for the second idea. I haven't looked into scripting much but I guess it's possible to have a script run X and then kill it after ten seconds or so...