Hans,
Thanks much for the feedback.  I went with Debian on this one because, given 
the problems I was having with the CD and its IDE interface, I thought a 
network install would work best - and I get the impression that Debian's 
support for this sort of thing is the most mature.  Besides, I was being 
lazy; I already had a Debian network-install CD burned.

Anyway, I made the changes you suggested, did the updates, downloaded the 
"unstable" versions of xfree86, and also had to download the library for 
libglide2x.  When all this was done, I still encountered the following error 
when running xf86cfg:

(WW) ATI: PCI/AGP Mach64 in slot 1:5:0 could not be detected!

The XFree86 version for this was 4.2.1.1.  I tried "unstable" first because I 
was under the impression that it was more mature than "testing."  I tried to 
reload xfree86-server for "testing", but apt-get said that I already had the 
newest version.

Am I SOL?

Vaughn Treude

On Wednesday 15 January 2003 02:43, you wrote:
> Am 14. Jan, 2003 schwätzte Vaughn Treude so:
> > I'm trying to install Linux on a Compaq Presario 900 notebook.  I
> > discovered to my dismay that there was a problem with one of its
> > chipsets, and that all
>
> Only one on a compaq? Your lucky day :).
>
> > the newer distributions (that is, anything with a 2.4 kernel) lock up on
> > the
>
> Don't RedHat, SuSE, etc. still have 2.2 kernels available at install?
>
> Woody, the most recent debian, has 2.2 and 2.4 kernels available.
>
> > install.  (What happens is that they boot from CD but at some point the
> > CD drive ceases functioning.)  Following the advice of some posting on
> > the net, I used a network-based install of an older version of Debian
> > (2.2.19 kernel.) This worked fine, and then I did an "apt-get install" on
> > all the X-related components I could think of.  I ran the configuration,
> > but I can't get X up and working.  The system has an ATI Rage Mobility U1
> > AGP video adapter and xf86cfg doesn't recognize it.  From a web search,
> > it seems that this adapter is supported in Linux, but I suppose I need a
> > newer version of X.  According to my error log file, it's 4.1.0.1,
> > released 21 December 2001.  Should I try downloading a newer version from
> > the XFree86 website, or is there some way to get Debian's site to give me
> > a newer of X without having to upgrade to a newer version of the
> > distribution?  The latter sounds like a cleaner approach, but I'm pretty
> > clueless when it comes to the Debian world.
>
> http://people.debian.org/~branden/xsf/xsf.html
>
> Looks like 4.2.1-4 is in unstable.
>
> $ cat /etc/apt/preferences
> Package: *
> Pin: release stable
> Pin-Priority: 600
>
> Package: *
> Pin: release testing
> Pin-Priority: 70
>
> Package: *
> Pin: release unstable
> Pin-Priority: 80
> $ egrep "testing|unstable" /etc/apt/sources.list | grep debian.org
> deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
> deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib
> non-free
> deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
> deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib
> non-free
>
> Make that preferences file, add those 4 sources to your sources.list, do an
> "apt-get update", then "apt-get -t unstable install xserver-xfree86".
>
> Maybe try "-t testing" first, which should get you 4.2.1-3.
>
> If you haven't already dist-upgraded to the current stable, please do that
> first.
>
> apt-get update && apt-get -u dist-upgrade
>
> Make sure you have security in your sources.
>
> $ grep security /etc/apt/sources.list
> deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main contrib non-free
>
> ciao,
>
> der.hans