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[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

I booted the 2-floppy version of BL3 and did Xsetup (plain VGA, 640x480,
PS/2 mouse - no problems with not seeing what I typed like I had with
previous versions), then Enter for Xvesa.  I was warned before hitting
Enter that if Xvesa does not work it is probably related to DOS or Windows
system files.

This is the LILO version of BL3 so this message is not relevant and maybe 
should be removed.

I hit Enter and got back to the prompt.

I typed startx (startX?) and again it did not start X but I got a blank 
screen with blinking cursor for a bit, then the screen blinked a bit, then 
it started to reboot and got as far as Video BIOS version 1.00.17 and 
stuck there.  I was able to warm boot with Ctrl-Alt-Del.  

This time it read both disks on the first try not the fourth try.   Maybe 
the drive is cleaning itself with use?

I did Xsetup and Enter with the same lack of results and don't want to 
type startx because it will probably reboot.

This is a plain VGA color video, 512K, I think it is Tseng ET3000.
Is this not Xvesa compatible?  I vaguely recall one laptop with color VGA 
where we could not use VESA drivers in the DOS viewers, but I think 
Compushow worked with the Tseng driver.

Maybe the message about DOS system files should be replaced with one to
the effect that some older computers have video chips that don't work with
Xvesa and won't start X when you hit the Enter key after Xsetup.  I think
someone reported getting a non-VESA-compliant video card to work with
Xvesa.  I will check this one with Syschk for VESA status.
dmesg does not mention the video chip - is there some other way to 
determine it in linux?

The computer has a 1992 BIOS and maybe some 1993 parts as well.

I will try SVGAlib on it instead, after installing to hard disk, with 
links graphical from JP and seejpeg since I don't want to compile zgv 
right now.  

DOS has a program that makes video cards VESA compliant when you run it as 
a TSR - UNIVESA.  Is there something similar for linux?