[ale] Monitor won't display more than 640x480

Mike Millson mmillson at meritonlinesystems.com
Thu Nov 27 10:12:51 EST 2003


I did some more experimenting, and what it looks like is happening is
the screen resolution is being determined from the laptop display
instead of the external monitor. The laptop display is 11" wide and the
external monitor 14", so only 11/14 of the window image is being
displayed on the external monitor. The rest is there, but its off the
screen and can only be seen if I move the mouse to the edge of the
monitor. When I do that the window image slides over so I can see the
rest of it.

I tested the monitor on a RHL 7.1 box, and it works fine.

How do I get X to ignore the laptop display and probe the external
monitor for settings? Before I start X, I make sure just the external
monitor is displaying, then start x. But when I do that, the laptop
display comes on, so that tells me it's fixed on the internal display.

I checked, and there is no BIOS setting to deactivate the internal
display. All you can configure is whether you want to use the internal
video card or the one in the docking station. I don't have a docking
station. 

Mike

On Thu, 2003-11-27 at 08:35, Steven A. DuChene wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2003 at 12:11:10AM -0500, Mike Millson wrote:
> > I am running RHL 9 and have a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitor
> > connected via an Apex Outlook KVM to my Dell Latitude laptop. If I set
> > the resolution to greater than 640x480, it expands the resolution beyond
> > the size of the screen so all I see is the middle part of the window on
> > the monitor. When my mouse gets to the edge of the screen, the window
> > "scrolls over" so I can see the edges.
> > 
> > Is there such a thing as a monitor not being compatible w/ Linux? I
> > didn't find any monitors listed on the RH compatibility list or any
> > other compatibility lists, so I'm guessing not.
> > 
> > Attached is the XF86Config file I'm using. 
> > 
> > Anyone have any ideas?
> > 
> > Mike
> 
> Look in the /var/log/XFree86.blah.log (or /var/log/XFree86.log.blah) where blah is
> a digit like 0   In there you will see the details on what your Xserver discovered
> about the video card and monitor. In particular pay attention to anywhere you see the
> word "Virtual"
> 
> You are getting a virtual display size larger than the 800x600 you have hardcoded into
> the XF86Config file. This is most likely because it is actually discovering these larger
> available display resolutions that would work with your card monitor combo.
> 
> Also it is better initially NOT hard code in a display size but rather flip through
> the available ones it finds using the "Ctrl-Alt-+" and "Ctrl-Alt--" (+/- are the
> plus amn minus keys specifically on the keypad area od your keyboard). Once you find
> a display resolution you like use the xdpyinfo command to find out exactly which
> resolution you are at. Once you know that then you can hardcode that plus others
> into the XF86Config file



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