install fails on Averatec 3120V laptop

[Peter L. Hurd]

Hey All,

I'm trying a fresh install on an Averatec 3120V laptop.

The Averatec laptops used to be called Sotec or something like that.

Installation fails when the screen goes white.  This happens after
booting the kernel, after the disks have been found, I think the last
line is something like "Running /sbin/loader"

I found a few pages on installing linux on this, or closely related,
laptops.  The white screen is supposedly avoidable by booting with
"video=vga16:off" when installing debian, tried that no effect.

Knoppix is apparently installable if booted with "noscsi" tried that
too.

Also found a post in which the kernel options nopcmcia no probe
resolution=640x480 were supposed to work, tried that.

I also tried a text install, no effect there.  I still get a white
screen.   I get the feeling that there is some video mode change which
is mucking things up, winXP says the video chipset is SiS 630/730.

I've tried "linux text noscsi nodma noprobe", and many other
combinations, some of which produce wider or narrower grey stripes on
the right hand side of the final white screen...

I've used the same CD to install Fedora on other machines, memtest86 CD
boots and checks out fine, the laptop is running XP just fine now.

I'm stumped, hints welcome,

-P.

-- 
Peter L. Hurd                                  Department of Psychology
Assistant Professor                               University of Alberta
Ph 780.492-3578, Fax 780.492-1768                     Edmonton, Alberta
http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~phurd                      T6G 2E9 Canada