HP A1640 & ViewSonic VX1935wm
 

I've just installed Fedora Core 6 on this machine.

The issues so far:

- DVD not working
- Resolution for monitor is 1280x1024 instead of 1440x900

The DVD issue is ok. I had to install Fedora using http from another machine. I can live with that issue for the moment.

The second issue with the Resolution is driving me nuts right now. I can set the resolution any way I want (even edited the xorg.conf) file with ModeLines to no effect.

I need to get the resolution to 1440x900 as the picture otherwise is horrible on the monitor.

Everything considered this is a nice machine. The monitor is pretty good as well when I use it on another PC (running Windows).

Anybody having an idea how to configure this monitor for X11?

The Video Card is an Intel 82G965.

Thanks,
Reiner

You need to use a program called "915resolution". I'm not sure if it is part of Fedora Core, but it is readily available (google). It works by changing one of the modes in the video bios shadow ram (not the bios directly), so it needs to be run at every boot. Some distro's (Suse, Mandriva, others) have it in their X configuration utilities to load during init.

Unfortunately 915Resolution does not recognize the Chipset type of the computer.

Chipset Id: 29a08086

Reiner

There is a patch for 915resolution, if you wish to rebuild it to work. Easiest thing to do would be to download the src.rpm from fedora, add this patch to the spec file, and rebuild the package. No guarantees that this will work.

The patch is here.

I've tried downloading the src and patch.

At least it changes the resolution, etc, but won't do the trick on my machine. It switches to 1440x1024 (or even higher) if I do so.

Reiner

With the patch, does it at least allow you to change one of the default resolutions? I can't remember the command parameters, but there is one that just gives a listing. Usually, you will wantto change the default highest resolution (1280x1024 24 bit) to the new resolution. Don't use one of the empty definitions, as the driver won't figure it out.

Yes, I was able to change resolutions, which wasn't possible before.

I first changed the one you mentioned, that didn't work well and then I changed all of them to that resolution - same result. It would change to 1960x1024 every time when I changed the resolution.

Reiner

There are also drivers available from Intel for your graphics controller..

http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/index.html

The intel web site is a complete mess and finding the driver for download is even worse. Navigating 200 pages to actually find the right piece is not a good thing.

Building the driver from source isn't my kind of thing either. I probably wait until those drivers make it into the regular Fedora Core 6 package.

For now I would say that any of those HP desktops aren't suitable for Linux for a novice (it's usable but not really working).

Reiner

FC6 should already have driver support for the 965 chipset. The drivers were released to the mainstream well before FC6 came out.

I know they are in Mandriva 2007, which released before FC6. Maybe you should try it instead.

I've tried the Intel driver from FC6 as well. It would not start at all on the PC. That was my very first test I did after digging a bit.

Reiner

RE: Have you figured this out?
 

I'm having the same problem with an nVidia GeForce4 MX 420 video card and ViewSonic VX1935wm monitor... Where you able to figure this out?

Mahalo - Zach

Check the specs of your monitor first.. which state..
Fh: 30~82kHz
Fv: 50~85Hz
Optimum Resolution 1440x900

edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to reflect those values

then modify the screen section to include the resolution you wish to use..
Hit CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE to kill X, it should restart automatically, if it doesn't use the command startx to restart it. it should come up with your new resolution.

And that's pretty much all you should need to do unless you wish to install the proprietary nVidia drivers for your card.. but you didn't list your distro so I can't point you to a relevant how-to..

http://www.nvidia.com

Follow-up
 

Thanks for such a quick response!

I made the changes you recommended and I'm still getting a about 10% of the monitor's horizontal space unused.

I'm running Fedora Core 6 with the following kernel.

Here is my xorg.conf file.

Any other ideas?

Thanks - Zach

lets see what it's actually runingat shall we ?
open up a shell and run the following commands..

This will show us what resolution your monitor is actually displaying at what color depth..

Take a look through the Widescreen how-to from Gentoo..
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Widescr...lutions_(WSXGA)

One interesting comment in the how to is "Some drivers do not support Widescreen." so you might want to install the nVidia Proprietary drivers for your Distro to see if that resolves the problem.