kxlight installation on a dedicated pc - questions

[haywirepc]

I got an old pentium 500 doorstop laying around, and some time ago I bought amiga forever. I have been running aforever hosted on my windows box.
 
I decided to do a full kxlight hd install of amiga forever on this old pentium 500 so I could sort of have a dedicated amiga computer again.
 
When I boot the amiga forever cd in this p500, I got only 800x600 video.
This is strange because even with the built in video card, I got 1600x1200 under windows 98,xp or linux. Its on an ancient 20 inch crt monitor.
 
I did the install, and same thing, just 800x600 available in prefs for screen res, I mean thats the highest available. I tried rebooting the cd-rom and at the f2 screen, specifying a higher screen res. This works, but how do I get it to work when booting to hd. Is there an installer script or something for the knoppix boot that can be modified to alter the max resolution?
 
Also, this machine has an ancient 16 bit soundblaster 64. I get no sound.
The machine also has built in sound but I believe its disabled in bios.
I will try and see if sound is coming from the disabled built in sound card next...
 
Any help getting this working would be greatly appreciated. I plan on moving this motherboard and other parts to an old pc case I have which looks very much like an a2000/a4000.
 
I'd do kartwheels if I could get this working at higher resolution and with sound. Also, can someone suggest a better sound/video card for this kxlight installation if these don't work? I'd be happy to spend a few bucks on ebay to fix my problems.
 
Finally, can someone suggest a pc joystick that works well under amiga forever? I really want to play star control and some other older amiga games with the joystick.
 
Thanks for any thoughts or advice.
 
Steven

[haywirepc]

I forgot to mention, but this is a p500 celleron with 256 megs ram, 4 gig ide hard drive currently set up as the boot drive, and dvd-rw drive.

[Fraccy]

The CD is designed to work at 800x600, but the HD installation can work at the maximum detected by the Knoppix auto-configuration system. Unfortunately, it doesn't always recognise the video hardware, so it drops to a safe VESA mode.

That's exactly what happened when I installed it on my new notebook.

To fix it, I edited the xorg configuration file: /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Take a look at the following section, to find out what screen modes have been detected:

...
#
# Auto-generated by KNOPPIX mkxf86config

Section "Monitor"
...


Find a suitable mode, then add it to the 'Screen' section a bit further along. On my computer, this only had resolutions for 800x600 and 640x480, so I had to add 1024x768 to each line.


Section "Screen"
...
   SubSection "Display"
      Depth     16
      Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
   EndSubSection
   SubSection "Display"
      Depth     24
      Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
   EndSubSection
   SubSection "Display"
      Depth     32
      Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
   EndSubSection
EndSection


Save the file, and reboot. Now in the Amiga screenmode prefs, you should have the higher resolution(s) available!

I hope that helps...

Amir

[haywirepc]

Amir,
 
Thanks for your help I'd love to get this working. Can you tell me, how do you get to the xorg configuration file, like can you get to it from amiga os 3.9 or do you need to boot linux and get to the file that way?

Steven

[Fraccy]

Several ways to do this. One way is to boot into KX Light, then drop to a console using 'Ctrl+Alt+Backspace'. You may need to press 'Enter' a couple of times to bring up the prompt.

Then type:

init 2     [this brings you to the correct 'run level']
e3 /etc/X11/xorg.conf     [e3 is a small text editor included with KX Light]

Commands within e3:
'Alt + h' to access the help screen
'Ctrl + k' 'q' to exit without saving
'Ctrl + k' 'x' to save a file and exit

Type 'init 5' to start E-UAE again, and hopefully the screen modes will be available. If not, try rebooting.


You can also boot the computer using a live CD such as Knoppix; then mount your hard drive and use the text editors on the live CD to edit the configuration.

In theory you could even do all this from within E-UAE! But you'd first have edit the .uaerc configuration to give you access to the Linux root directory, which makes it a rather impractical circular process... ;-)

[0amigan0]

@Fraccy:

Does Kxlight support wi-fi ??

[Fraccy]

@0amigan0

Yes! That is, if your wireless card is supported by the particular version of the Linux kernel used in KX Light... (2.6.24, as far as I recall.)

Of course, the latest kernel supports more cards. KX Light needs an update...