[Scottish] Sorting out our new computer with Linux

[ray]

On Sunday 13 March 2005 14:52, John McCreadie wrote:
JM> Dear Sirs,
Obviously John has never been to a SLUG meeting - otherwise he would have 
started with a more appropriate "Hey Youse".

First I would concur with Colin's points. 

If you bought the machine and SuSE together get the supplier to fix it.

If you bought SuSE 9.2 then my experience of their support (pre-Novell) is 
that it is very good and the manuals have most of the information that you 
need. Also there is vast amounts of documentation on the DVDs/CDs. If you 
have a free version from a magazine cover disc, then you probably need some 
experience or help. By the way do not buy SuSE 9.2 now as 9.3 can be 
pre-ordered from e.g. Amazon and is due in 3-4weeks.

To get help here it would be easier if you gave a bit more information about 
what you have and what you have done.

Most modems should work, but you do need to configure them.  What sort of 
modem (make and or chipset) do you have?

The motherboard has Creative SB Live! which is supported, but needs 
configuration (semi-automatic during the latter, graphical part of the 
installation)
You will need the updated NVidia drivers, and perhaps VIA patches for the 
motherboard.  The best way to get these and the graphics drivers is via YOU 
(Yast Online Update).

If the graphics problem is that you get the initial text screens on booting, 
but then have a blank screen when the system enters graphical mode (run level 
5), the most likely cause is not the graphics card, but the vdu monitor not 
identifying itself properly and then receiving inappropriate signals.  You 
can sidestep this by entering '3' as a boot option to use run level 3 (text 
mode).  Then log in as root and enter 'yast' to use a text mode coniguration 
to select an appropriate monitor in hardware/graphics.  This is also the best 
place to set up your modem, network connection and run the on-line update 
from.

As well as Ian's offer to help, you could send me a phone number off list, and 
I will try to help.  I have a vested interest because I am considering 
purchasing a MSI K8N SLI Platinum to replace a Gigabyte K8NS Pro that doesn't 
like more than 1GB RAM, and I use SuSE for work.

-- 
ray