TC noob needs help: distorted screen colors on TC Plus live boot

[rebbi]

Hi, Gang,

I have a good deal of Linux experience (Puppy, Bodhi, Lubuntu, etc.) but I'm a noob when it comes to TC.

I need a REALLY lightweight distro to resurrect a pretty ancient laptop: Gateway Solo 2500, 256 MB RAM, 400 MHz Celeron CPU, Neomagic gfx card. I've successfully installed Lucid Puppy, Vector Lite, Antix and Bodhi. All have their plusses and minuses, and I'd really like to give TC a try.

Problem is, when I boot the live TC 5.1 Plus CD, I get to a green and yellow, blurry mess. I've seen this referenced in a forum search, but can't quite figure out what I need to do. Can anybody reply with (or point me to) a walkthrough for fixing this, if possible?

Also, I have an Atheros based PCMCIA wifi card plugged in. How do I get that up and running?

Thanks in advance!   

[Juanito]

The "blurry mess" typically results from using Xvesa with the wrong settings or with a buggy bios - 915resolution fixes this for some intel graphics, but you don't look to have intel graphics.

You could try using the "text" boot code and then running xsetup.sh or you could try using Xorg-7.7, but that might be difficult with the limited amount of ram you have.

[tinypoodle]

1. Do a forum search on "neomagic".
2. Use options as displayed with

Code: [Select]

pccardctl --help to retrieve info about your pcmcia card, particularly ID, which then should be useful for a google search, plus you could post output here as well.

[gerald_clark]

Also use the 'laptop' boot code to enable the pcmcia.