[NTLUG:Discuss] Video problem after memory upgrade

[Kevin Brannen]

Douglas Scott wrote:

>I have a rather strange problem.  I decided to upgrade my RAM from 512M to 1G.  
>I went to Fry's and bought an additional 512M DIMM.  It is the same type as 
>the other DIMM, 512M PC3200 DDR.
>
>When I booted the machine back up everything was normal at first until Linux 
>actually began to start (that is I could see the BIOS messages just fine).  
>Then the screen went blank and stayed blank until KDE started.  KDE was doing 
>just fine but I decided to check on why the screen had been blank during 
>bootup and so I went to a command line by entering Ctrl-Alt-F1.  The screen 
>wasn't blank anymore, it complete garbage.  It looks as though the video was 
>completely undefined.  This was definitely not a problem I was expecting.
>
>...
>
>Looking through the log messages I found the following.
>
>vesafb: abort, cannot ioremap video memory 0x8000000 @ 0xf0000000
>
>Comparing this with messages during a boot boot I see this
>
>vesafb: framebuffer at 0xf0000000, mapped to 0xe080a000, size 131072k
>vesafb: mode is 800x600x16, linelength=1600, pages=2
>vesafb: protected mode interface info at c000:f0c0
>vesafb: scrolling: redraw
>vesafb: directcolor: size=0:5:6:5, shift=0:11:5:0
>Looking for splash picture.... found (800x600, 25593 bytes).
>Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x16
>fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device
>
>I also checked in /dev and discovered that /dev/fb0 didn't exist anymore.
>  
>

Yep, you're being hit by the framebuffer stuff.  Sigh...I can't decide 
if the FB code is worth the effort as it seems to cause so much trouble 
to people.  (IMHO of course :-)

On the boot line (of grub or lilo), put "vga=normal" and see if that 
helps.  That option should turn the FB off.  There may be a FB code 
(mode) that will allow it to work for you, but I've always found it 
easier just to turn the thing off.

HTH,
Kevin