Earlier this week there was a discussion of trying to get an S3 graphics card to work with XFree86 and getting only black screens after startx.
I had reported that some people said that S3 cards and LX motherboards didn't mix. I had given up on this combination, though I didn't understand why this particular S3 card worked in one of my LX motherboards but not the other. I even bought a new-used Matrox Millennium to substitute for the S3 card, and mysteriously that -too- gave only black screens, even though it worked on the other LX. Then I figured out the issue: On the working LX box, the BIOS assigned the video card to IRQ 11, as IRQ 9 was taken by a modem. On the black-screen LX box, IRQ 9 was free, and the BIOS assigned IRQ 9 to the video card. In the BIOS setup, I forced IRQ 9 to be unavailable for PnP, and the video card got IRQ 11. Presto! The Matrox Millennium now works! (Presumably the S3 card probably would too.) Perhaps this is due to the special treatment IRQ 9 sometimes gets for VGA purposes (something I don't really understand.) So if you are getting black screens and your card is using IRQ 9, try forcing to to something else. Dan Halbert
