This problem makes me feel newbish... please help

I'm installing Linux as a no cost, low resource way to set up a couple of file servers and as a way to teach Linux to some younger kids. The machines are all Pentium 2 266's with 128mb of EDO-RAM. The graphics cards are old ISA cards with VGA out puts, they look to be Powercolor brand, so its possibly ATI. On one of the machines, no matter what distro I try to install, after the setup finishes and it starts loading modules, the monitor goes blank, as if its lost signal. No response, not a thing. I can't get the log in screen to come up. I've tried every distro I have, from openSUSE, ubuntu, kununtu, and gentoo to Fedora. Absolutely nothing. Same response. Oddly enough, doing a bare installation, such as the server install works perfectly. Any ideas on what the problem may be?
Thanks for the help in advance

My guess is that X doesn't like the graphics card or your X configuration doesn't like it. That's why the terminal will look okay but the GUI will fail. Post the output of "lspci" and your Xorg.conf and we'll have a look-see.

Okay, it's an S3 Trio64 based GPU. What is your Xorg.conf that does not work? I want to see what driver it's trying to load.

Whoops! I guess installing X.org might help if you want to use a desktop environment

Also, If you want a leightweight desktop environment that should work better with your older gear, I would advise that you stick with XFCE over GNOME or KDE as XFCE was designed to consume as few resources as possible while still remaining useful.

If you don't want to manually install it, I suggest you check out Xubuntu, which is a version of Ubuntu that comes with XFCE as the defualt desktop environment.

-Zorak

Is this your first time installing a linux OS? This is purely out of curiosity because I haven't seen you visiting this particular forum before.

Your post count and comments indicate that you have been around here long enough to know what you are doing computer-wise, so don't kick yourself because even the experts in any field have brain farts.

-Zorak

I was somewhat aware of his respected status among the CPU forum members, and based on some of the stuff that I've read that he has posted, he is respected with good reason. I was, however, curious if he was new to the whole linux scene as I have never seen him on this board before. That coupled with his statement on either this or a different thread " This is my first linux forum trophy" leads me to believe that he is only just now venturing into the linux world/forum.

Also, I realize that in my last few posts, I am coming off almost as though I were a linux veteran. Although nobody has called me on it, I want to take the opportunity to clarify. I have only been using linux sporadically over the past year, and this year, I would say that my OS usage lies in roughly 75 to 80% linux. I may be new to the scene myself, but I am doing the best I can to learn as much as possible, and I enjoy helping others with issues when I can because I know what it is like to have difficulties.

Just thought I might clarify a bit.

-Zorak

You've basically solved the issue you were having on your own. That's not my definition of a "n00b". Plus, you learned a few good Linux trouble-shooting techniques in the process, decreasing the chance that you'll head back to this corner of the forums with a problem and more likely to come as an adviser.

Don't be overly confident but never sell yourself short either.

This page may help :-D

http://lbs.sourceforge.net/

Other benchmarks include:

tiobech

mysql-bench

ab ( apache bench )

and the benchmarks used here: http://www.linuxhardware.org/artic [...] ode=thread

When I did a project in my Architecture course on the effects of gcc compiler optimization flags, I used benchmarks that chewed on the processor to try to isolate the effects. As such, I used nbench (a bit old but still pertinent), the POVRay built-in benchmark, and transcode a test mp3 with lame. The latest POVRay is multithreaded and there is a SMP-enabled lame fork that you can use if the system is multi-core (as so many are these days).