Ubuntu
xserver-xorg-driver-s3 package

Fresh install of Ubuntu desktop, Gnome causes blackscreen

Asked by Dan

I have an old box that I'm trying to install Ubuntu on.
Put in the disk, install everything is OK until Gnome tries to start, then the screen shows Frequency out of Range and goes black.
Tried changing the res on the disk install with no luck.
I've had a good look over the forums and other cases here and tried some things with no luck.
Here's a bit of my xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "S3 Inc. VT8375 [Prosavage8 km266/kl266"

and I've monkied with the driver (vesa) and option "monitorlayout"

It's a dirt common machine (clone) with a mainboard videocard, what's the big deal?

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said : 		#1

The deal is most probably DDC or EDID not implemented correctly by your monitor.
We need to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file which is on your hard disk.

We also need to know which refresh rates are supported by your monitor. Do you have this info in the documentation provided with your monitor?
Otherwise tell me make and model and lets see if we can find something reliable on the net.

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Dan (dan-untamed-travel) said : 		#2

Oh dear, the're a 'colorsview' badge on it but when you google that you end up with some vietnamese site, no luck on doco or video modes unfortunately.

It must have some sort of protocol embedded though as it used to work fine in various video modes on XP.

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said : 		#3

Yes, the protocol would be DDC or EDID but thease cheapo models either don't implement it or implement it badly.
In XP you have "drivers", which are nothing less nothing more than a db of modelines.

If you have the CD or floppy that came with the monitor you could look into the .inf files to see what modes are in there.
We can also have a look at what it is in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf as well as your /var/log/Xlorg.0.log files. Please paste them here.

If worst come to worse we can try ourselves with a safe setting, it might not be optimal but al least you will be able to work. For this I need to know your monitor size.

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said : 		#4

A last tip. In XP you should be able to see what refresh rates are set, together with which resolution. This could be a good starting point.

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Dan (dan-untamed-travel) said : 		#5

Curiously, the other day my wife and daughter were screaming at me and I thought it may be a good time to reorganise my hardware parts cupboard and I stumbled upon the manual for this monitor. It has a table listing a series of resolution modes with their horizontal and vertical dimensions, the horizontal frequency and the field frequencies. The listed modes were:
IBM/VGA, VESA/75, VESA/85, VESA/60, VESA, and so on. Can I set the mode manually in the .conf file?

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said : 		#6

Yes.

Within the Monitor section of your xorg.conf file, you have to add these two lines:

HorizSync 30-96
VertRefresh 50-160

My numbers are just an example. These are the horizontal synch rate (in KHz) and vertical refresh rate (in Hz) ranges which should be given in the documentation you have found.

If you have any doubt please ask us.

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