Graphical screen dying on new FC4 install

[James Wilkinson]

Jose Achmad Palala wrote:
> I must admit I'm just a newb, but I think a fresh "clean" install of *Fedora
> Core 3 or 2 *would be better instead of installing core 4.
> I heard somewhere in the fedora website that fedora was gently optimized for
> the pentium processor, but not completely optimized to allow for better
> compatibility with other processors though.

Actually, most of the code is compiled to be *compatible* with anything
from a 386 on up, since using the features of more recent processors
either doesn't provide a measurable performance boost, or the features
aren't available on all recent processors.

Some packages, such as the kernel and glibc, can make use of more
recent features. In this case, Fedora usually provides one ("i586") RPM
compiled explicitly for Pentium and compatible processors (e.g. the AMD
K6), and one ("i686") RPM compiled for the Pentium Pro, Athlon and
other compatible processors (e.g. the Pentium 4).

It's *tuned* (alignment, etc.) for the Pentium 4 these days, since there
are so many of them. This doesn't seem to hurt performance of other
recent processors, and certainly doesn't hurt compatibility.

See, for example, http://diary.codemonkey.org.uk/index.php?month=12&year=2004#20041204

Of course, this all assumes we're talking 32-bit Intel compatible
processors.

> It must be an OS problem because it runs other operating system such as
> win98 smoothly.

It ain't necessarily so. Memory problems (for example) are notoriously
intermittent, and Win98 uses memory very differently to Linux.

Personally, I'd advise the Original Poster to run memtest86 for several
hours (at least), and try swapping out the graphics card if he has a
spare one anywhere.

I'd note that graphics cards can go wrong without getting especially
hot. I've got an old PCI S3 Virge which runs fine in text or VESA modes,
but hangs the computer reliably whenever the OS tries to use
acceleration. It's done that on four or five OSes for six years now...
(And it's been remarkably useful as an otherwise well-behaved emergency
spare over the years, which is why I keep it).

What sort of Nvidia AGP graphics card is it? TNT? GeForce? (The chip
revision number would be interesting...)

I notice Dotan said:
> However, I did notice that there is no swap
> space. cat /proc/swap is blank. I DID specify a swap partition, but
> there is no swap! Could this be a cause?

It's possible, I suppose. Can't help on a machine with that little
memory.

Is the swap listed in /etc/fstab?

What happens if you run /sbin/swapon -a as root?

Hope this helps,

James.
-- 
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