When the computer boots up the screen looks just great. It's when i go in and try to set up the card and monitor that the prob. begin. The video card in integrated into the motherboard and is a Nvidia of some sort which doesn't appear on my Mandriva 2006 list. The monitor is an old HP svga, 800 x 640. i've got the specs on it and it's on the Mandriva list that comes up when i type mcc at the command prompt and go into Display setup. i've been trying many diff. combinations, but haven't had any success. Is there any way i can just tell this thing to accept or use the config. that it first boots up with??? It looks just great & i'm only going to use it for a short time bef. i give the cpu back to my friend who has another monitor (19" LCD). Any help would be appreciated. Have a nice evening!

You don't have to use the specific monitors in the list, try using a generally compatible monitor at the 800 by 600 spec and it should work.
I have done this and the only problem that occurred was that I had to simply center the screen using the screen hardware control.

Thanks Peter. Will give it a try. Sounds good. Thanks a lot!! and have a nice afternoon!

Still no luck. When i go into the config "gui" Xconfig or mcc, i can set the monitor o.k. but don't know what x server to use. The monitor is an old 14" HP 1198 A. Any ideas? Thanks! Have a nice evening!

Hi Frazelle,

If you know how to edit through the console, then I suggest the following:

log into your system (no gui)
if you have mc - midnight commander then use it to go over to the X11 directory.

If you don't have mc,
then cd /etc/X11
you will have to edit using another editor such as joe, vi, etc..

There you will find the XF86Config file.
Look for the section as follows:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
VendorName "can be anything"
ModelName "can be anything"
HorizSync 30-85
VertRefresh 48-120

The last 2 lines here are more important. You might be able to find that info on the case of the screen that you have.

Then then next few lines are the ones that should help to get the resolutions working: don't expect much on a 14 inch screen

# 640x400 @ 70 Hz, 31.5 kHz hsync
ModeLine "640x400" 25.175 640 664 760 800 400 409 411 450

# 640x480 @ 60 Hz, 31.5 kHz hsync
ModeLine "640x480" 25.175 640 664 760 800 480 491 493 525

# 480x300 @ 56 Hz, 35.2 kHz hsync, 8:5 aspect ratio
ModeLine "480x300" 21.656 480 496 536 616 300 301 302 312 Doublescan

# 480x300 @ 60 Hz, 37.8 kHz hsync
ModeLine "480x300" 23.890 480 496 576 632 300 301 303 314 Doublescan

Finally, the last section that you want to look at regards the video card:

Section "Screen"
Driver "svga"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultColorDepth 16

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "800x600" "640x480" "480x300"
EndSubsection

Try default color depth of either 8 or 16
The modes should be in the range that the screen can handle.
I would try to stay with smaller resolutions for your screen.

Then after you finish editing your file, you can manually start the gui using startx from your console.
If you can't see the screen properly, hit ctrl-alt-backspace to abort.
Then you can experiment by changing some of the numbers and restarting X again.

Peter

Wow, Peter, that was impressive. will print it out and try and see what happens. Thanks a lot for all the help so far!! Have a nice afternoon!