[Sussex] Re: Sussex Digest, Vol 17, Issue 7

[Geoff Teale]

On Sun, 2004-01-18 at 13:00, Sam (Shuriken1) wrote:
> Hi, thanks for your response Geoff. 

That's what we're here for.

> I'm sorry about the lack of information,
> but this truly is new to me, don't know anything yet. I tried both the
> Ctrl+Alt+F# and Ctrl+Alt+Backspace combinations, both of which did nothing
> in one of my 'freezes'.

OK, this suggests that the X is in a bad enough state to not be
responding to input.

There could be a few things that cause that, but we'll get to that
later. 

A couple of questions:

1. When your machine freezes do the Caps Lock, Num Lock and Scroll Lock
lights flash on your keyboard?
2. Do you have another machine with which you can get network access to
the machine with the problem?

> I read on a forum about someone with a similar problem, he replaced the
> keyboard and that stopped his freezes, unfortunately it hasn't stopped mine.
> Hope this means something to you,

It sounds like his keyboard was doing something weird that caused the
device driver to crash or hang X.  Your problem may be similar, but
looking at your hardware specs I'd be looking at the graphics chipset
before anything else.

A quick search on Google for your motherboard turned up this:


================================

XFree86 4.x series

If you are using XFree86 4.x, then you may find that the auto-configure
utility detects the hardware incorrectly. You will then need to manually
edit the XF86Config-4 file with a commandline editor such as mc
(Midnight Commander). You may also find the next few lines from my
XF86Config-4 file handy

Section "Device"
 
Identifier "SiS 630"        # You
name this whatever you want
 
Driver "sis"
 
Vendorname "SiS 630"        # You
name this whatever you want
 
Videoram 32768              # RAM
allocated to VGA in BIOS
 
Option "AGPMODE" "4"
 
Option "Accel"              #
Replace with "noaccel" to disable
 
Option "Turboqueue"
 
Option "FastVram"
 
Option "SetMclk" "133 MHZ"  # System
RAM speed (100 or 133 MHz)
 
Option "DacSpeed" "150 MHZ"
 
Option "DPMS"               # If
your monitor supports this
 
Boardname "SiS 630"
EndSection


================================

.... I took that from this FAQ about your motherboard:

http://radel.inet.net.nz/m810lmr.html


It's well worth a read with regard to other issues with this motherboard
as well.  

-- 
Geoff Teale
general: <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
home   : <geoff at tealeg.uklinux.net>
work   : <gteale at cmedltd.com>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/attachments/20040118/8df5276e/attachment.pgp