Can someone with a 1400x1050 SXGA+ screen help me out?
 

Hello all,

I'm new to Linux and am very impressed by this friendly community.
I'm having an issue that I hope can be easily resolved.

My screen will just not go to a higher resolution (it is a 1400x1050 SXGA+ screen that operates at 60 Hz). I've been searching left and right for a couple of very frustrating days to try and find the horz. and vert. sync rates that I should use, but have had no luck. I've even tried out random ranges, to no avail.

I have a Voodoo m355. This uses the Compal CL50 chassis. Compal makes the laptops for quite a few OEMs, so I was thinking that there may be a good chance that the settings from anyone else's 1400x1050 screens may be the same.

Can anyone with one of these screens post their sync rates?

Any help is much appreciated.

the key is to set the correct display adapter to your xorg.conf/XFree86.conf (you can choose it from gnome/kde with graphical tools). at least on my machine vesa didn´t do all resolutions. after setting that:

"(snip)
### HorizSync 31.5 - 67.0
VertRefresh 59.9 - 60.1

(snip)
Depth 24
Modes "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

so, you don´t have to tell refresh rates. actually you can comment the vertical refresh rate, too. but i found that it can lead to random errors and a very flashing screen. with those lines above you can (to my knowledge) force x to use 60Hz.

i haven´t actually tried this with your setup, i have 1280x800 wxga and radeon 9600 mobile. but this is the way it *should* work.

The problem with setting the correct display adapter is that the ATI drivers aren't really working. I know that people have gotten the latest XFree86 ATI drivers to work with X.org Server though, so I'll try to do some more investigation.

Or is there another way to set the correct display adapter? I am using gnome but am not sure about the graphical tools you are talking about (I haven't noticed it before, and am at work right now so I can't check).

I'm going to try commenting out the horizontal sync and setting the vertical to 59.9 - 60.1 and see how that goes. I've already added those extra resolutions to xorg.conf with no luck though, so the key is most likely the display adapter.

using fedora core2 (gnome 2.6?) the right menu-item is hardware-tab under menuitem "display".

I'm using Gnome 2.6 under Slackware with Dropline installed. I don't think that there is anything similar to the Control Panel in Windows.

Using VertRefresh 59.9 - 60.1 and HoriSync commented out, the screen finally changed to 1280x1024, which is much better than before. It says the screen is operating at 0 Hz, which I don't understand at all.

I think all that I need to do is get the ATI drivers installed. I've already attempted a couple of times, but when I finally have some time again I'll try again.

Hopefully once the drivers are installed, VertRefresh 59.9 - 60.1 and HoriSync commented out will work. I'm just a little worried about the 0 Hz...

Thank you very much for your help!

at least it shouldn´t flicker ;)

well, the reason i suggested gui tools is cuz i dont remember the correct lines for ati 2d driver. search the web, maybe you can find the missing lines to use ati driver instead of vesa/fb. after that it should be ok. or you can always run the configuration-tool (is it XF86config in slack?)
unless of course you want to have 3d-acceleration. i know nothing of that.

LOL... 0 Hz still makes me a little uneasy though. I can't rerun the config because it doesn't work after installing dropline (goes to x.org). I'm sure there's a way to do an x.org config though. I really think that I may just wipe Slack and do a completely fresh install, and work on getting everything working before I go to dropline. At least this way I can work my way through installing the ATI driver without overcomplicating the situation.