X11 not starting

["Nino on NetBSD 5.0.1" <nbsdold%gmx.net@localhost>]

Dear NetBSD users,

I have a problem that I can only relate over hear-say, as I do not have the 
actual machine. - A friend of mine has got an ancient Maxdata laptop, model 
unknown, which should be around 10 years old. WinXP is running on it, 192 MB 
RAM, 6 GB disk. We tried to replace Windows and installed NetBSD 5.1. It works 
very well, but we had - and now that is the problem - NO chance to get X11 
running.

Let me mention that this setup has been made from a tar backup that I created 
from my own system, and it has been already working in numerous environments 
(including, with some fighting, VirtualBox).

So, we did Xorg -configure and copied it over to /etc/X11/xorg.conf. When 
trying to startx, it crashed, giving the message that no screens have been 
found or that the driver has not enough memory for 1024x1024 (which is strange 
- the laptop has 1024x768).

When replacing the driver from "siliconmotion" to "vesa", we get as far as 
having a little white square cursor on the upper left corner of the screen and 
then the complete NetBSD system freezes (you can even take out the harddisk, it 
won't notice; and certainly, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace or even going back with 
Ctrl-Alt-F2 do NOT work) and needs a hard reset.

In /etc/X11/xorg.conf, we tried deleting all Depth lines but one, and tried one 
after the other with depth 16, 15 and 8, we set resolutions manually of 
1024x768 and 800x600, we set some horizontal and vertical sync rate (guessed 
from the net and the FreeBSD guide) - to no avail; either it crashes in a 
civilized way (with the siliconmotion driver) or it freezes completely (with 
the vesa driver).

(On a side note, I have noticed that I was unable to set a fixed resolution on 
my "real" machine - when I say, I want 640x480, I do NOT get it - X11 again 
starts in 1280x800, so I am not even certain whether setting the resolution in 
xorg.conf even helps.)

I must say, I am unfortunately out of ideas. I know well, this is the laptop's 
fault, not NetBSD's, but I would still be very grateful if you could give me 
any pointers as to what to try next.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions and your help!

Kind regards,


Nino
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