On 2020-12-14 Alberto Abrao wrote:
I will kindly ask you to let me know if it does not work. The machine is still here and I am willing to poke around to reproduce any other issues you may find.
Turns out it did work! Thanks! I found a table of all the vga= values on the net.
The video works on boot now, but it takes 120s to boot until it reaches a point where it switches to a vga mode that isn't slow as molasses. I think we've all seen over the years at least one time where a boot console scrolls like a 1200 baud modem. That's what we're seeing here with the new vga mode, obviously it's a barebones non-accelerated mode.
I have no idea why it eventually switches to a faster mode and still works! But I'm not complaining.
Since we never reboot that box, an extra 2 mins during reboot is not important. So problem solved (in terms of good workaround found)!