OK, working on my second I-O. This one's a V5 now powered by a new patched BIOS from Badflash and the hard drive I was running on my old V3 before it went straight Jailbait.
Problem one: Booting/console: I can read the text at the POST right up to the lilo prompt, then things get weird. First, the lilo prompt and options are shown with a different color for each letter. OK, I've seen this before with my V3 (with V1 BIOS) when I don't tab out of the ugly splash screen and let lilo boot from under that. But on that machine, as soon as the boot messages start flying, then text looks OK (actually, doesn't jailbait use FB? I don't know). Anyway, with the hard drive in there, boot messages and console text look normal. But with the new machine, I get no text. It seems like the screen moves up a pixel or two for each new line, but no text ever shows. I can blindly log in and then startx and no problem (mostly, see problem #2). Hey, I even did a fsck from an emergency repair prompt blind just now (see problem #2 again). I figured this was a simple vga="something" problem at boot, but no matter what I try, I get the same thing. This is with Redhat 6.2.
The solution is probably simple, but damned if I know what it is.
Problem #2: RF-screen = random power loss. On my first machine, when I ran the harddrive, I did it without the RF-shield since I knew I'd eventually go jailbait, and didn't want to hack it up. On my V5, I cut a hole for my hard drive and installed it (I have a I-Mod 1 with the drive bolted to the heat sink.) Things were running fine, but then after a while, it just died. Power switch was useless - no response. I figured I must have shorted something out and killed it. I pulled the harddirve out and reseated the cable, and finally got it to accept power (had absolutely no response at first). (* had another little problem I'll discuss below as solution #1) So then I let it run overnight with the whole back off and it ran fine. So I reassembled it today with the everything and it ran fine for a while. Then poof, same thing. I took out the RF-shield and now it is running fine with just the plastic on back. I'll see how long it goes. (note, this is why I had to do the repair-prompt fsck "in the dark", even the normal fsck during boot coudn't handle the sudden power loss). I think maybe it might be an overheating problem with the drive, especially since it is attached to the heat sink. But why would it cut power to the whole machine? That was scary and strange.
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Solution #1: This is either a solution or I got lucky. After the first power-out problem, when ever I started X blindly, well, it didn't work. The screen blanked, but I never got X. And I couldn't seem to escape it either. I could telnet into it, and run X apps remotely, but could not get X on the screen. Interestingly, `ps ax` showed that none of the apps that get started by `startkde` were started. Just X was running. Really strange, especially since it was running before the power outage. So I went into the BIOS, and changed a few things. one was Video Off mode to DPMS and Video Off After to suspend. That's all I think should have tok better notes). Only options that looked remotely applicable. I migt have also changed the power off button from 4-second delay to right-away. Anyway, that fixed the problem somehow.
