Display problems after upgrade to 8.10

[PaulHuffman]

I have an old Gateway g6 with a VGA monitor, an EV700, that was running 8.04 fine, but when I applied an upgrade to 8.10, the display has shimmering lettering and backgrounds. I went on and applied a 9.04 upgrade as well, but I have the same shimmering hard to read screen. Forgive the typos, but I can't always see what I'm typing. Prefernences>Display indicates "Unknown monitor" but I haven't figured out what to do about it.

[PaulHuffman]

I played around with some differnet settings in xorg.conf, but hit error messages when I restarted. Couldn't get back to the desktop to rename my backup to restore previous settings. Eventually chose to create a new profile from one of the little pink screens, and that got me back to the desktop with the same problems as above. Isn't there a way to I escape to a non graphical console if I screw this up again?

Trying to run 9.04 32 bit.

Figured out that cntrl-alt-function key will get me to non graphic consoles. Now how to I get back?

[PaulHuffman]

I found some configuration settings for the EV700 and changed my xorg.conf to


Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
HorizSync 30 - 70
VertRefresh 50 - 120
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
SubSection "Display"
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
EndSection


At least it boots now, but it doesn't fix my display problem.

Noted that when the system boots, I see a message "BIOS fails cutoff (1998). Is this system too old to run 8.10 or 9.04?