Thanks Tony,

For you or anyone else following, I gave up on the subject MB and used a more consumer oriented one for my server...all is now OK there. But I did put the subject board into another case and have been experimenting with it. Whatever the issue is with video, it does NOT occur under CentOS 7. Interesting.

While ClearOS definitely shifts video modes to a tiny font (and I did use nomodeset), CentOS leaves it in the large character mode and boots with no loss of video. There is something different between them. I thought CentOS would be a good "almost ClearOS" experiment. By the way, video does return after about 5 minutes, and I think the system is basically working then. Very repeatable. I don;t know what would cauase the video to eventually recover.

Looking through logs has not given me a clue. I don't know what video driver ClearOS is using, but I would be happy to check if someone can tell me how.

I tried loading the ASPEED driver but instructions with it are very poor. When I got the .sh to run, I received an error message with the instruction to "install manually". Note that the ASPEED package (two chips) includes not only the IPMI SoC, but also a VGA solution and other IO.

Thanks,
Drew VS

Tony Ellis wrote:

Simply mentioned the Intel case to prompt you to see if MSI had similar requirements for your "222" board (CSM-C222-89?)... Just did a search and all the links to the detailed information about this board on the MSI site. None worked (404) - old discontinued board? Worth contacting MSI support? Maybe you already have...

ASpeed have a 'ASPEED Graphics Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris Package' available - maybe worth investigating if ClearOS is using the ASpeed SoC in the ClearOS distribution... What graphics driver is ClearOS loading? This may provide the clue as to which Graphics ClearOS is using.

when the integrated VGA on the CPU is used

Technically with the Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3 series processors the VGA graphics is provided by the Intel "222" PCH which is part of the two-chip package. Follow several CentOS forums - and never seen this type of graphics problem mentioned within those forums...Good Luck...