[SOLVED] Commell LE-370Z mobo doesn't want to boot Puppy Linux?

Nearly an hour later.

Boot screen still up, no change.

I'm going to call this a FAIL.

EDIT: funny, pressed a key on the keyboard before powering it off. Here's why it wasn't budging...

http://i.imgur.com/sb7mqRp.jpg

Didn't shrink it, it's hard enough to read as-is. My talent for turning a perfectly sharp image into pure motion blur is quite amazing, lol.

Not that I can read much on that image, but it seems that there are some serious problems with 2.6 and newer kernels on that board.
All advice that I have left is to play with kernel boot options like acpi=off and similar, in hope to get a booting system, otherwise I am out of clues.

I've tried --

acpi=off
acpi=strict
acpi=force
acpi=off apm=off

pci=noirq
pci=bios
pci=biosirq

No fix yet.

The rationale for the pci= lines is this -- I'm using a PCI graphics card. I didn't have these problems without that card -- instead, I had problems where I could only boot on one particular monitor that is at my local tech shop. (It was sold to someone fairly recently, so there's NO chance I can bring it home.) This motherboard has a very strange video output on its internal VGA connector. It's not a refresh-rate issue -- I've got an LCD monitor that handles basically anything through 75Hz. This is something weirder, like a sync-on-green thing or something -- 4 of the 5 monitors in my house won't even notice that there's a signal there. The lone exception is a 640x480/8b screen from late 1991. It's fully functional, but the display is serious garbleness.

FWIW --
One Samsung SyncMaster 510MP (60, 70, 72.5, 75 Hz)
eMachines-branded eView 17f2 (have 2, goes up to 160Hz, CRT)
Viewsonic 15" LCD (don't remember model # or ranges)
Samsung CVL-4955 (datestamp: DEC1991 -- 'nuff said)

So the graphics card *may* be causing the kernel crash, but if I take it out I'm running blind. Can't remember if I mentioned, but the graphics card is a PNY VERTO FX5500 with 128mb RAM. I can pull all sorts of numbers off it if that helps.

Have you considered trying an older Puppy release? There are releases going back to 2007 listed on the Puppy download page, and I suspect that the kernel upgrade that's causing your problem was not in any kernel prior to 2011. (That's just a guess.)

Not relevant to your problem, but a example of kernel "improvement" causing problems: I have an old Dell laptop with an on-board nVidia processor. When the kernel was upgraded from 3.6 to 3.7, the nouveau driver stopped working, and the VGA output timings were incorrectly set, so even a tty connection could not be read. I can get a usable display with the 3.7 kernel by using nomodeset in the boot parameters, and using the nv video driver. (The tty timing setting is still incorrect, so straight tty usage is still unusable. Of course, without mode setting, the graphics display is somewhat limited.)

If you suspect the video card to cause the issues it may help to prevent the drivers for that card from loading, try it with the

nouveau.blacklist=yes video=vesa

options.

Cleaned some corrosion off the back of the vid card. Not a fix -- apparently it was just sitting there making me worry for no reason wasn't much of it there anyways.

boot: puppy nomodeset didn't work.
boot: puppy nouveau.blacklist video=vesa didn't work either.

Puppy has some nonstandard boot: config options, so I tried boot: puppy nouveau.blacklist pfix=vesa, and it didn't work, BUT it did give me new information.

Line at bottom of screen:

i801_smbus 0000:00:1f.3: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17

Does that mean all this mess is from an IRQ CONFLICT??!

A "puplet" (unofficial derivative of the mainline Puppies) called SimplePup 031 boots and runs fine. The problem is, SimplePup is based on Puppy 1.07. YEEK. That's from about 2004 -- more than a little out of date Puppy has come a long way!

Better news, is that Racy Puppy 55 (brand new, one of the four or so mainline Puppies) boots fine (!), but needs a bit of obedience training. Looks like (from what I've read up on) this newest version of Racy Puppy has issues with nVIDIA graphics cards. Guess what, my only PCI graphics card is... an nVIDIA-based PNY Verto FX5500

Oh well, it'll get straightened out eventually. Most likely by me getting an ATi/AMD PCI video card...

For reference -- the current mainline Puppies are --
Precise Puppy (for *really* new stuff, compatible with Ubuntu Precise Pangolin)
Slacko Puppy (for new stuff, compatible with Slackware 13.37)
Racy Puppy (for new-ish stuff with quirky hardware, and slightly older stuff)
Wary Puppy (for basement relics through about Pentium M era technology)

There are a whole TON of Puplets, most if not all of them supported nearly as well as the mainline ones are -- within reason, of course; the really old ones are liable to have little or no support, simply because their creators got bored and wandered off. There's one fellow on the Murga Puppy Forum who collects and archives Puplets... last I heard he had over 1000 different Puppies and Puplets! (Don't you need a license for that?)

Slacko Puppy 5.5 works fine with my setup.

I've made a friend on the Puppy forum who's sending me a non-nVIDIA card so that I can try Racy again, but Slacko's it for now. He's "across the pond" (he's UK, I'm US) so it'll be a little bit before I get it... but...

One way or another I've got this licked.

Also, there is a Puplet (non-mainline) version of Precise Puppy 5.5 called Upup Precise 3.8.2 that's non-PAE and has k3.8.2 in it (those are really the only differences between the two, as I understand it), and I'll try that on this thing tomorrow and see how it goes. Regardless, as I say, this is a solved problem in at least one way of several.

How do I mark this thread as [SOLVED]? (or does a Moderator need to do that?)

EDIT: Oh. DUH. That's how you do it You know, considering I'm an artist (of sorts) who carries pencil and paper EVERYWHERE, it's really amazing how often life reminds me that I'm half-blind at least when it comes to what's right smack in front of me!