Yesterday I bought BenQ FP222W (Analog, 22" wide format LCD) monitor. I would greatly appreciate any and all help I can get on configuring it on my amd64 PC with openSUSE 10.3 OS. I have read the thread "need help setting up wide screen LCD", particularly the suggestions by jschiwal. I understood it as recommending to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf, which I am willing to try, but have not done yet. (Currently my suse 10.3 is "broken" with 800x600 screen, struggling with w/h ratio 4/3, whilst I need 8/5). Monitor "natively" supports 1600x1050, 56-76 Hz image frequency, 30-82 kHz Line frequency.

I have tried to use sax2 with two commands with various parameters:
"sax2 -a" - no luck
"sax2 -V 0:1024x640@70" - no luck, either.

To do that I went to console (ctrl+alt+F1), logged in, switched to root, killed the x-win server with "init 3", issued sax2 command, then ran the x-win server by "init 5". Is this wrong and if so why?

All help and advice will be greatly appreciated.

OldAl.

unless Suse has a gui tool, I think you're going to have to edit your xorg.conf file. It's not really that hard, just sudo or su to root, then edit the file by adding the Hsync and Vert. refresh range to the Monitor section, and the resolution to your mode line (not sure about your particular monitor, but I'm guessing that should probably be 1680x1050, not 1600). If your video card supports that resolution, I think that should be all you need to do. If you're still having trouble, post your xorg.conf and we'll try to set you up.

Just had to configure a 22" myself. After probing it with different settings I commented sync lines out and X started up perfectly using DDC, 1680x1050.

I looked up the specs for you:
http://www.benq.com/products/LCD/?pr...specifications

Native resolution 1680x1050
Horizontal Frequency 30 - 82 (KHz)
Vertical Frequency 56 - 76 (Hz)
Video Bandwidth 25 - 165 (MHz)

I put those values into videogenand got the outputYou probably don't really need to add a modeline (to the monitor section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf). You probably don't really even need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf at all. But once you know how to select exact resolution and timing by adding modelines, it's actually easier than the more automated methods.

Be sure to make a copy of /etc/X11/xorg.conf before editing it.

Then you can edit it with your favorite GUI text editor, and use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill and restart the X server to try the new settings. If it works, great.

If it doesn't, X is then pretty sick. It sounds like you know how to log into terminal mode at that point. I've never fully understood the consequences of changing run level and for some of what I do when I have a bad /etc/xorg.conf changing run level seems to be too much. Instead of changing run level, I've had perfect results with
to clean up after X dies and to restart it (except that in some distributions that should be gdm instead of kdm). I assume I don't need to tell you how to restore from the backup of xorg.conf if you remembered to make one.

You are quite right - it is 1680x1050. My old age and frustration is showing... I am quite happy to try to edit the xorg.conf and will report my experience with it.

Thank you for the offer to post xorg.conf. Hopefully I will not have to do that, but the offer gives me some peace of mind (so, again hopefully, my fingers will press fewer wrong keys).

I am really grateful,

OldAl.

I have a really miserable lack of understanding of acronyms - what is DDC? You really give me encouragement to do the editing of /etc/X11/xorg.conf - I will not forget to save the old xorg.conf in a directory called /etc/X11/trash :-)

Thank you for your good advice,

OldAl.

DDC: Display Data Channel (VESA)
Above is the whole contents of my Monitor section.

Thank you for your detailed response and instructions. Thanks for looking up the spec - my quoting 1600x1050 was my mistake - it is 1680x1050, as is shown in the printout of p 37 of the "user manual" that comes on the BenQ CD.

I will printout your instructions for my reference and keep it in front of me when I proceed to edit the xorg.conf file! For sure, I will first make a copy of it!

Your carefully thought out response is greatly appreciated and it will probably will be appreciated by others who are bound to fall in the same desperate state as I found myself.

Sincerely,
OldAl.

Yes, and if that was not clear for the OP, what it means is that if you comment out everything in your Monitor section, the X server will automatically chose the correct resolution and refresh rate by asking the monitor through the DDC.

Thanks for that! Made a copy to "Kate" of your contents of Monitor section (together with some other detailed instructions). Will print that out on paper and keep it in front of my nose when I do edit the xorg.conf (using vi editor).

This instant reply is great - its quicker than I can implement/try the suggestions...

Many thanks,

OldAl.

I'm curious if you have the "videogen" program mentioned. I'm using SuSE 10.3 and I don't think I have that program. I do have "gtf" however. For an LCD monitor I'd use a refresh rate of 60HZ. SuSE has a "use Modes[0]" entry in the Monitor section, so if you generate a modeline yourself put it in the Modes[0] section and not the "Monitor" section. Make sure to edit out the ".00" part of the Modeline label. Xorg doesn't seem to work with it. Then insert the Label in double quotes in the Section Screen / Subsection Display / Modes entries. Even if you let xorg.conf figure out the Modeline itself, I think you need a Modes entry for your resolution.

Which card are you using? If it is nvidia, you will want to install the nvidia drivers. In YaST2 -> Software there is a "Community Repositories" section that will include repositories for "NVidia" and for "ATI". That will make it easier to install a driver using the package manager. If you run an install program, nvidia's install program installs /usr/bin/nvidia-xconfig. Running that as root (in init level 3) might generate a working xorg.conf file that works.

Good Luck!

Actually, you can "steal" modelines from Xorg log. I'll add here my Screen section, with LCD you normally do not need to specify wide range of configurations.
Yea, people are different ... it's Saturday night here, why I'm not out there doing silly things as normal people do ... ?

Do you know how to use vi? It isn't beginner friendly!

I may not have been clear enough: xorg.conf is only used to start X. It isn't used while X is running, so you can edit it while X is running (I assume at an inferior but visible resolution). So you can use kwrite or whatever other simply GUI editor you like.

In the monitor section, you may already find the HorizSync and VertRefresh lines with the values read from your display 30 - 82 and 56 - 86. If not, it is a good idea to put those in. The # on those lines in Emerson's example is a comment character, telling X to ignore those lines. You probably don't want that # there.

That monitor section is where you would add the modeline. Then the name of the modeline "1680x1050" usually should be referenced on the Modes lines in the Display subsection(s) of the Screen section.

So you know SuSE comes with an old Xorg version which is not DDC aware?

I installed the RCS package and make backups before editing.

cd /etc/X11
sudo mkdir RCS # ( just for the first time )
sudo ci -l xorg.conf

This will allow you to backup different versions of your xorg.conf file. If the RCS directory exists, the backup will be there which reduces clutter.

You can go back to the latest backup with "sudo co -l xorg.conf".

There are options to restore an earlier backup as well.