Dell Inspiron 600M Video Problem

[Tod Thomas]

I'm trying to load FC on a used Inspiron I just got.  I played with the 
FC3 release all day yesterday, because I already had the CD's burned, 
and couldn't get it to work.  I tried FC4 last night and am still having 
the same problem.

After the welcome screen, when I skip the CD validation check, Anaconda 
starts running.  It notices my mouse and video card but says the monitor 
is unknown.  After that I get a blank screen.

I tried using 'linux lowres'.  That worked long enough for me to get FC 
installed but once throught the reboot sequence I get the blank screen 
again.  Very frustrating.

I tried dropping to a command prompt and editing the xorg.conf.  I'm not 
sure what my refresh rates should be so I followed an example someone 
had posted on the web with a similar (but not exactly) setup - no go.

There seems to be a lot of people out there who have gotten FC to work 
remarkably well on the dell insprion 600m, no problems at all.  I can't 
seem to replicate that experience.

Incidentally, I don't like either Gnome or KDE so I normally exclude 
them, install X and then add my own window manager later.  Could 
excluding the stock window managers be causing my problem?

I'm stuck, any help would be appreciated.  I could use some pointers to 
good doc references too.  Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places?


Thanks - Tod


Dell Inspiron 600M
1.4GHZ Pentium M
ATI M9 (ATI Mobility - Radeon 9000) video card.
Quanta Display 14.1" (1400 x 1050) SXGA+