S-Video out on a Dell Inspiron 1100 not working in SuSE 10.0

clarinetJWD · 05-02-2006, 04:38 PM

I just reformatted my laptop and installed SuSE 10.0, and was planning on using it to send my various movies and audio to my home theater system (i.e. a mediacenter pc). I have the correct drivers installed (Motherboard Intel 845, graphics 845gm) but I can't find any way to output video to the S-Video out on the computer.

A second, but non-essential problem I have is that the [Fn] commands do not work in SuSE. I am quite new to Linux, so bear with me. Thanks!

spindles · 05-05-2006, 09:34 AM

Hi clarinetJWD,
I don't know about laptops and what might be different about them compared to a desktop machine, but you should tell us what video card you have and what drivers you have for it. For example, there are some well-knowm issues with nvidia cards and S-video output.
Also, if you connect to a TV with your S-video cable what happens? Any picture at all? Perhaps a picture when you first boot up and then no picture when the video mode changes.

Also people here who can help you will want to know what's in your XF86config or xorg config file.

suselapper · 05-06-2006, 05:25 PM

It sounds like your system has a similar situation to mine, which means that you will have to configure a custom xorg config file that allows output to video. As you said in your message, the Fn-keys that switch output modes in WinXP don't work here (presumably because they rely on interaction with running Windows programs).

This is probably not a trivial operation. For my system I got it to work when I include the following in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Code:

Section "Screen"
  Identifier   "LCDwithTV"
  Device       "i915TV0"
  Monitor      "LaptopLCD"
  DefaultDepth 16
  SubSection "Display"
    Viewport 0 0
    Depth 16
    Modes "1280x800" "1024x768"
 EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "TV"
    Device      "i915TV1"
    Monitor     "Television"
    DefaultDepth 16

    Subsection "Display"
        Depth   16
        Modes   "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort 0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection

Section  "Device"
#secondary screen setup:
  Identifier "i915TV0"
  Driver     "i810"
  BoardName  "915 GM"
  BusID      "0:2:0"
  Screen     0
  Option     "MonitorLayout" "TV,LFP"
EndSection

Section  "Device"
#secondary screen setup:
  Identifier "i915TV1"
  Driver     "i810"
  BoardName  "915 GM"
  BusID      "0:2:0"
  Screen     1
  Option     "MonitorLayout" "TV,LFP"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
#testing TV layout
  Identifier   "TVLayout"
  InputDevice  "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
  InputDevice  "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
  InputDevice  "Mouse[3]" "SendCoreEvents"
  Option       "Clone" "off"
  Option       "Xinerama" "on"
  Screen   0    "LCDwithTV"
  Screen   1    "TV" RightOf "LCDwithTV"
EndSection

================================================

NOTE that if you decide to try this you really should make sure to make a backup copy of the original xorg.conf file. Also, the driver that I use is not necessarily appropriate for your system (mine has Intel 915 graphics). What you'd have to do is modify the file to look like the above, then restart X and if it works, you will get some output to your S-video port. Remember that you can use a text terminal (hint: Ctl-Alt-F2)), if the X-reset fails badly

As you might be able to tell, with this scheme, you'd have to switch between different xorg.conf files to enable or disable TV output.

clarinetJWD · 05-07-2006, 10:13 AM

Thanks a ton! I'm not sure how to "include" things like that in Linux, as I said, I am brand new to the OS. I should be fine with a bit of googling, though. I'll let you guys know if it works!

suselapper · 05-07-2006, 11:26 AM

Yes, give that a try and let us know. One comment: this method bypasses/overrides the settings that yast2/sax2 implements. What this means is that configuring X through yast2 after making this manual change is likely to mess everything up again. Of course, once you have it figured out, you should have no need to do further fiddling

and aside from that - a detailed customization of a linux laptop probably would include more editing of the file anyway (e.g. for editing mouse/touchpad settings).