Toshiba Satellite 2595CDT - Monitor size shrinks?

[Guest Captain Nemo]

My Toshiba Satellite 2595CDT (128MB RAM, 10GB HDD, Celeron 400mhz) is now running Vector Linux 5.1 (and is quite speedy). I was running Mandriva 2006 Free on it (not so speedy unless using IceWM). The problem I am having is the size of the display --- it's set for 800x600 and 16K colors but I have about a 1-inch "margin" all the way around the screen. I have noticed this on Knoppix and now Vector Linux. Mandriva and other flavors of Linux I've tried on the laptop haven't had this problem.

 

The BIOS setting does have a place for me to "stretch" the display and typically once that's done all is well (had to do it when the machine had Win98 on it). However, I made that BIOS change and even though the first part of bootup was fine and "stretched" once I got to the user login it was "unstretched" again which makes everything smaller and harder to read.

 

Does anyone know why the smaller, speedier distros, like Knoppix and VL seem to override my BIOS stretch settings, and how can I fix it?

 

I'm a newbie, please be gentle...

 

[moved from Laptops by spinynorman - welcome aboard :)]

[Guest Captain Nemo]

Additionally --- when I reboot the text screen appears to be "stretched", filling in the full amount of screen real estate that I have. When it hits LILO it all goes back to unstretched...

[Guest Captain Nemo]

Ok, after some more googling I found a fix!! I edited the xorg.conf file to turn on the option for CyberStretch. However, the base resolution in xorg.conf was 800x600 so it looked chunky. I continued to edit xorg.conf and added to any display line that contained 800x600 the 1024x768 mode. Additionally I added the lines below to the "Monitor" section:

 

HorizSync 31.5-48.5

VertRefresh 50-70

# 1024x768 @ 60 Hz, 48.4 kHz hsync

Modeline "1024x768" 65 1024 1032 1176 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync

 

And voila, it works!!!

[spinynorman]

Congratulations and thanks for reporting back.

 

I'll mark the thread solved. B)