Hi,

i have been having some trouble getting XFree86 going. I recently 
purchased an AlphaPC164SX which i am trying to setup as a second 
workstation.

I tried many things, and currently am stuck with one issue: the computer 
freezes prettty much immediately after i start X, and i can't see 
console messages. It stops responding to pings, so i think it has a 
kernel panic (i found several messages on the internet saying this too).

How do i get to see the console messages? When i use a serial console, i 
can't start X at all because it fails to find a TTY to run on. If i put 
in a second video-card to use as console the machine won't boot at all. 
(the second card is ok, if i put it in on it's own, the machine will 
happily boot using it as console)

I'm kind of out of options, imo. The only thing i could think of is 
possibly kgdb via a serial line; but does that give me console messages? 
Or am i doing something wrong with the serial console, is it perhaps 
possible to start X when using a serial console?

Any hints are very appreciated!

greetings,

Eike Dehling.

PS: graphics cards are a matrox/g200 and a s3/Vision968.