SC420 and Vesa driver in FC3

[Erik Hemdal]

> > I have installed FC3 on the Dells. One thing you have to 
> remember to 
> > do is to go into the BIOS and change the video memory from 
> 1m to 8m. 
> > That seems to do it.
> > 
> 
> There doesn't seem to be any configuration options for the 
> video card in the BIOS for the SC420.

Some systems do and some don't.  Yours doesn't.  I noticed that the Dell
website 
shows "Embedded graphics" as the video option for a PowerEdge SC420.  You
don't have a graphics card,
instead you have a graphics chipset on the system board that shares a
portion of system RAM.  This saves 
money, because the manufacturer eliminates the dedicated video card.

On the systems I've seen that do this, Dell doesn't manage shared video RAM
via the BIOS, they do it through the
Windows driver.  You get a small amount of memory by default, and higher
resolutions/colors
are only available via the driver.  I've been burned by this before, and I
avoid "embedded graphics" 
whenever I can.

You can search the archives of this list for postings about BIOS patches
that might fix the problem.  But the patches I've seen are not official Dell
BIOS updates, so you'll probably end your warranty if you patch the system.

Erik