Monitor display problem

[Roger Merritt]

I recently acquired a newer box to hold my server. I was using a PII 300MHz 
with 64MB RAM. The new box has an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with 239MB (?) RAM 
and what seems most pertinent, an S3 ProSavage DDR (86c420) graphics chip.

When I first tried configuring X I discovered that when I tried to exit 
x-windows the machine would hang. When I hit the reset button my monitor 
showed a brief message, signal outside frequency range (which might very 
well be normal behavior). Eventually I got xorg working at a pleasant 
1024x768 size, a great relief after the 640x480 I was limited to before, 
but I still have the problem that when I try to exit the x-server the 
machine hangs. It happens regardless of whether I use fvwm's exit command 
or hit <Ctl><Alt><Backspace>.

Checking my xorg.conf file I find that none of the optional commands are 
uncommented, and I started to remember years ago when I had to enable one 
of the options (something to do with using the software cursor) to get 
XFree86 to work -- I think that machine had an S3 card, but it might have 
been SiS.

Anyway, I noticed that when I came in to work one morning, the pilot light 
on the monitor was blinkiing. No graphics signal to the monitor. Moved the 
mouse, hit the <Alt> key, hit other keys, no help. So I rebooted by hitting 
the reset button. Everything seemed to work fine. Now, I usually don't work 
at the console -- even though my regular working (MS Win 2000 Pro) is right 
next to it, it's usually easier just to use PuTTY to make an SSH 
connection, so I didn't notice for some time that the monitor light was 
blinking again.

I've tried the <Bsd> Google search engine, but can't seem to find a similar 
problem. I've wondered whether I should add the VESA option to my 
configuration file and rebuild the kernel. Can anyone offer suggestions -- 
possibly I just need to set something in vidcontrol?

-- 
Roger