X11 flickers, unusable

[gerlan]

I have been trying for a week or so to get X11 to run on my system. I have a Sony VAIO FXA59 laptop. I was able to install the base distro without any problems, but when I installed Gnome and configured X11 via xf86config, I am unable to get a decent picture. X11 displays a flickering grid with a box of noise in the upper left corner. I have tried to run gdm, but was presented with a bunch of flashing images (the login image at about 50x resolution and in pieces). The box of noise in the upper left hand corner is still present.

I am migrating from SUSE and was able to save off the XFree86 config file in order to get Gentoo up and running. Unfortunately, the SUSE config file was not of much use.

Does anybody have any suggestions? Thanks.

[ZagiFlyer]

This looks a lot like the wrong video driver is loaded. Do you know which graphics chip it's using?

Google tells me that PCG-F305, PCG-Z505SX and PCG-C1XS use the NeoMagic MagicMedia256AV chip set, but the FX209K uses the Intel i815 chip set.

I have a Dell, so I was just trolling for this information. The point is, it appears that Vaios have used several chipsets.
_________________
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[gerlan]

I thought that too, but according to http://myplc.com/sony/vaio_compare.htm , the chipset is ATI Rage Mobility. Does anybody know if this is incorrect?

I will try a new kernel with even more drivers enabled than I am currently trying.

Thanks for the thought.

-Tad

[gerlan]

I added more video drivers to the kernel, but am still unable to use X. When I run X with startx, the screen no longer flickers, but I don't get a decent picture. The windows are fragmented and I can see my mouse, though when I move my mouse, I can get the windows to change color like I am bringing the windows into focus. Unfortunately, they still seem to be too large for the display, possibly stretched verticly.

Does anybody have any thoughts on what to try next?