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Sindi Keesan wrote:

> that file appears to be what xf86config works with

What makes you think that?

> There are warnings that you will destroy your monitor 
> if you pick the wrong horizontal setting so I kept it low.  

So did I.

> I spent about an hour looking all over the place for our 
> two Compaq monitors and a couple of others and could not 
> find any of them.  Can you find Compaq monitor settings?  

Here's one:
-----------------------------------------------
Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "800x600 CSTN Display"
VendorName              "Compaq"
        ModelName       "Unknown"
        HorizSync        30 - 65
        VertRefresh      50-100
-----------------------------------------------

Does Compaq actually manufacture monitors?  Or do they
simply rebadge somebody else's?

BTW Slackware 7.1 includes a database of Monitors with 
suggested HorizSync and VertRefresh.  You will find it 
in /slakware/x1/xdoc.tgz

And here is something I found that might help you:
-------------------------------------------------------------
The last point is very important, because it is the one which 
is easiest to get wrong, and easiest to fix. For example, the 
following values will probably not work, or at best, allow 
only 1 resolution:   HorizSync 31.5  VertRefresh 60

The reason is in the mathematics:
* A HorizSync of 31.5 kHz allows 31.7 ms per horizontal scan line
* A VertRefresh of 60 Hz allows 16667 ms per vertical frame
* This requires exactly 525 lines per frame 

In short, by defining very rigid timing values for our monitor, 
we have limited our possibilities to a very specific mode. The 
above values would cause most video modes to be deleted, because 
they are "beyond the capabilities of the monitor" (as specified). 
If we're lucky, we might get a 640x480 mode which matches these 
values.

What we should have specified is something like this:
  HorizSync 30-55   VertRefresh 50-75

These values, taken at opposite extremes allow anything from 400 
to 1100 scan lines. The best way to set these values is to open 
the manual for your monitor, and look up the specifications. These 
will give you the right values to put in here.  Don't go wild and 
enter really extreme values, because you'll end up with video 
modes that don't work. Or (rumor has it) you may damage the monitor. 
If you're working without a manual, start with some conservative 
values, and expand them gradually. The values shown above are 
fairly conservative for today's monitors.

The symptoms of exceeding the hsync and vsync range of your 
monitor are typically:
    * a blank screen (most common)
    * loss of horizontal sync (diagonal lines)
    * loss of vertical sync (rolling display) 
-------------------------------------------------------------------

> lp0, deskjet 500 - I thought these matched your settings.
> I will try dj500 instead of deskjet, some day.

Nope.

> it does epson lq1500 emulation.  Do I just change deskjet to epson?

-----------------------------------------------------
lp|ps|PS|PostScript|epson:sh:mx#0:\
        :lp=/dev/lp0:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/postscript:\
        :if=/var/spool/lpd/postscript/epson.filter:\
-----------------------------------------------------
Note: /dev/lp0 works only if your printer comes up as
/dev/lp0 when you do the insmods.

Directory /var/spool/lpd/                                      
-------------------------------------------------------
drwxr-xr-x  11 root  root  1024 Aug 19 10:24 ..                     
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  root  1024 Jan  2 20:33 postscript             
-------------------------------------------------------

Directory /var/spool/lpd/postscript/
---------------------------------------------------------
drwxrwxr-x   3 root  lp    1024 Sep  4 18:06 ..                     
-rwxr-xr-x   1 ichi  bin     94 Jul 13 16:47 epson.filter           
---------------------------------------------------------

epson.filter
------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/gs -q -dSAFER -sDEVICE=epson -r180x180 
            -sPAPERSIZE=letter -sOutputFile=- -
------------------------------------------------
All those parameters must go on one line.  I split 
them to avoid a random linefeed 

> "fatal server error:  open_framebuffer:  
>     failed to open /dev/fb0 (no such device"
> cat /dev/fb0:  No such device

Are you sure /dev/fb0 exists on your system?  If so, try
adding the following parameter to the loadlin line of
BOOT.BAT in your DOS partition:
-------------
devfs=nomount
-------------

Cheers,
Steven