[ale] replace monitor

[Jeff Hubbs]

I found this monitor-detection thing a big surprise today when I tried
connecting the SVGA port of my laptop to a regular monitor for the first
time (I wanted to know if I was even getting output in advance of
potentially hooking it up to a projector later in the week).  This
laptop has the "wide-screen" display and I was worried what would
happen.  Anyway, initially, the monitor just cut off the left and right
sides of the display, but upon restarting X, X set itself up for the
monitor and put the built-in display in pan-'n-scan.  

- Jeff

On Mon, 2004-03-15 at 21:32, John Mills wrote:
> BoBo -
> 
> On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, bo bo wrote:
> 
> > This evening my Mitsubishi 17FS monitor expired. The
> > only temp monitor I have is a Packard Bell Model
> > PB2160
> 
> I have a couple of those and find they are only good for about 800x600 - 
> pretty doggy, I'm afraid. Easy to check with MsWin and the 'Display' 
> control if you have a window-box around. (They sell for about $5.00 at the 
> local thrift store, and if you need a $5.00 monitor, they're perfect.)
> 
> > On boot, everything runs OK, I see the normal script
> > as Fedora loads, and just when normally the gui loads,
> > the screen blacks out, while the machine runs fine. As
> > I imagine the logon and password prompt (but cannot
> > see at this point) I can type in name / pwd, and hear
> > the machine activity, as it normally would.
> 
> Try a VT console: <CTRL><ALT><F1>, .... You should see a text-only console
> login pane. <CTRL><ALT><F7> brings up the X11 GUI on my RH-7.3.
> 
> > Q: How can I force the machine (Fedora-core 1) to
> > recognize the replacement monitor?
> 
> The suggestion you are trying to run the monitor beyond its speed 
> capability is almost surely right, so "recognizing" the beast won't help. 
> 'Generic VGA'/'Generic Monitor' will probably play on it.
> 
> Most XFree86 configurations enable more than one screen resolution and 
> <CTRL><ALT>+ or <CTRL><ALT>- cycles through the available settings. Try 
> that and you will at least find out if you have an acceptably [low] 
> defined resolution.
> 
> Naturally your desktop will look sh***y. You will need to either edit the
> active version of 'xf86config' or use a friendly tool to resize the
> display to your usable screen resolution. If the tool can figure out 
> you're using the PB monitor, so much the better.
> 
> Maybe that will hold you till you can find a more functional replacement.
> 
> Regards.
> 
>  - John Mills
>    1884 Ridgewood Dr, NE
>    Atlanta, GA 30307-1166
>    404.377.2577
>    john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu
> 
> 
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