I have two DELL C640 laptops with the same integrated ATI Radeon 7500 video cards. System A has Slackware 10.2 with kernel 2.6.15.2 System B has Slackware 11 with kernel 2.6.18.1. In lilo System A has "vga="834"" which gives it "1400x1050-77" per fbset's output. When the vga="834" is put on System B it prompts me at bootup to correct my video settings. I know these cards are capable of 1920x1200 per DELL, and I would love to get that on these laptops, but have been unsuccessful up til now. Please help.

Your resolution is controlled by the xorg.conf file (in the /etc/X11 directory) There is a separate section that specifies which resolution settings are supported, and my guess is that the 1920x1200 setting is simply not present. If that's the case, you can manually edit the file and add it. Quit X, then statx and you should be good.

As for the vga setting in lilo.conf, personally I always use "vga=normal'

Correct me if I'm wrong please, but aren't the consoles controlled by the lilo.conf and the terminals (within the X Windows system) controlled by the settings in the xorg.conf file?

In lilo I have vga=791 which give me 1024x768
In xorg.cong I have the entries:

Driver "radeon"
VideoRam 32768
HorizSync 31.5 - 90
VertRefresh 59.0-75.0
DefaultDepth 24
Depth 24
Modes "1920x1200" "1600x1200" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"


Anything evident?

I did find something that differed between the two systems:
Whiile in console I ran "fbset -i" and The higher resolution system returned:

Frame buffer device information:
Name VESA VGA

and the othe box retuned:
Frame buffer device information:
Name ATI Radeon LW

How can I get the force the use of Vesa VGA on the second system?

A quick Google search seems to confirm that the max resolution of a Dell C640 is 1024x768.

http://review.zdnet.com/Dell_Latitud...54.html?tag=ut

Are you sure your laptop can render the higher resolution?

DELL C640 w/ATI Radeon 7500 w/TV out
Color Depth 65K colors 16.7M colors
Resolution 640x400 70Hz 70Hz
Resolution 640x480 120Hz 120Hz
Resolution 800x600 120Hz 120Hz
Resolution 1024x768 120Hz 120Hz
Resolution 1152x864 85Hz 85Hz
Resolution 1280x1024 100Hz 100Hz
Resolution 1600x1200 85Hz 85Hz
Resolution 1920x1200 75Hz 75Hz

Maybe this will clear up some confusion as to the card I have in these boxes.

Hmmm, well, from what I am able to find, the Dell C640 laptop has a max resolution of 1024x768. I'll defer to you but out of curiousity where are those specs coming from?

In any case, you are correct that the lilo settings will apply to the console session, while the X session will be conrolled by xorg.conf