opensuse video issue on a G3 iMac

This past Saturday I purchased an old G3 iMac blueberry for REALLY cheap. The guy included os9 disks, and said he had wanted to put Linux but lost interest in the project. It sounded a little fishy to me, but after seeing that the cdrom worked and that the machine actually booted, i went ahead and bought it.

At first, I loaded OS9, and it was really really easy. The whole thing finished in about 20 minutes. The "problem" with OS9 is that its not a current operating system. For me, it meant that I couldn't install Firefox, my web browser of choice. So...i went ahead and downloaded the powerpc version of opensuse 10.2. Using bittorrent and a high speed connection, I had all 5 disks in about 2.5 hours. There is also a dvd version which simplifies things, but this only has a cdrom.

Anyway, while it was downloading, I upgraded the memory to 512mb (from 64mb) and changed the hard drive to 80gb (from 6gb). The install went great, but my problems started after the install.

For some reason, the screen was shifted to the left. This meant that a little of the left side of the screen was cut off, and on the right side of the screen there was a big black bar. Since my plan was to sell this machine, this would not do.

I searched google, and found this page explaining the issue and somewhat providing a fix. I tried variations of the numbers but could get nothing to work. Suddenly it hit me to try something else. I searched google for "iMac G3 modeline", and sure enough I found someone who had it working, but was having a different problem.

So anyway, here is a summarized version of what I did to get the damn thing centered.

1) open a command terminal
2) type "sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf" -theX11 is case sensitive.
3) type in your root password when prompted
4) scroll down to Section 'Monitor'. Hit Insert key. Set HorizSync to 29-61. Set VertRefresh to 59-78.
5) scroll down to Section 'Modes'. Comment out the current 1024x768 modeline by putting a # in front of it. If anything fails and you end up stuck in a command terminal, just uncomment and restart to go back to what it was.
6) copy and paste the following modeline in its place:

Modeline "1024x768" 78.525 1024 1049 1145 1312 768 769 772 800 +hsync +vsync

7) hit escape key to get out of insert mode.
8) type a colon (:) to enter command mode.
9) type wq to write changes and quit vi.
10) reboot and enjoy!

now of course there are just the setting that worked for me. it is a blueberry imac 350mhz. it is possible that newer or older ones use different timings, so i suggest google searching. i wrote this all out so that i'd have it for future reference. it took me 2 days, mainly because i'm a little rusty with my linux commands. luckily i had time. :o|

in the end it will be worth it. i have a buyer for the machine already, and they'll be that much closer to just using the machine instead of thinking its broken. i only hope they don't wipe it and go back to os9! but hey, even if they do, now i'll have the experience.