OK in case anyone is interested and for the archives; I have found a solution.
Apparently the Trident video chip driver tries to use VESA's DDC, but the hardware doesn't seem to support this, which causes Xorg to freeze (doesn't display any error message either). The solution is from <http://michaelminn.com/linux/toshiba1800> where he has an excellent write up and also more importantly a working 'xorg.conf' file. The key attribute is to use 'DDC off' like so; Section "Device" Identifier "Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1" Driver "trident" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Option "NoDDC" EndSection His 'Server Layout' stanza also threw an error, so I commented this out and was able to get a working Xserver-xorg. I don't like the new HAL scheme where one can't configure X like one could in Sarge when we run into problems. For some reason it wouldn't let me choose different video drivers or even disable DDC via 'dpkg-reconfigure'. Is this expected behaviour ? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org