VGA Install Weirdness

[Philip C Mendelsohn <mend0070@tc.umn.edu>]

Does anyone have any experience with why some kernels seem to have trouble
with an S3 86C801 / 86C805 VGA video output?  I have a machine that will
load up from Caldera, but it barfs on RedHat 5.2, Mandrake 7.0, and now
Debian 2.1 (slink).  Actually, to be clear, it loads, but the video blanks
and will not return as soon as it gets to the 'loading root.bin...' line.

It is not the boot disk either, because each of these boot disks will work
on various other computers.  I have also tried the boot option vga=normal,
and vga=ask -- no luck.

Thanks -- this one's driving me nuts.

Phil M


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