Std Zorin won't run X

I installed the latest Zorin 9 on an old Dell PC with plenty of space. It's got a S3 Virge GT video card.
The display is an old VGA Gateway 700G
Whenever I just start it up, I see the grub boot, but nothing else when I tell it to continue.
But if I go into Grub, select the recovery mode OS, X will come up but runs very slowly like unaccelerated VGA mode.

It seems to do the same thing on a more recent Dell ST2421Lb as well.

Any ideas about what the problem is? How do I shift the video card into accelerated mode?
TIA!

Also, didn't the keys <ctrl><alt><backspace> used to shut down the X system and go to command mode? How does one do that now-a-days?

Sadly I don't think anything can be done unless you can get hold of a different graphics card that can fit in the system:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=163521

I tried the suggestions in your thread concerning 'inxi' but that doesn't seem to exist on Zorin.

I tried following the thread to do the 'sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-s3virge' command, but a number of things don't work about his descriptions, and it sounds like he abandoned the effort eventually anyway.

But his on-board graphics chip is the same one I have (82865G) but he didn't describe how to get it working. Could you please give me a pointer to someplace that describes how to do this?

Also, in a lot of places they still say that <ctrl><alt><backspace> shuts down the X system but that doesn't seem to work either.

OK, BIOS setting may have to be changed to point to the onboard graphics to work and/or remove the S3 Virge card - take it from there.