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Using Dell Monitors with Linux Machines


Guest ravikumar
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Guest ravikumar

Folks,

I got a free Dell flat panel LCD monitor. (1907FP). When I hook it up to my

linux box (I bought it from HP, and it runs Mandrake 10.0) and reboot the

machine, I see the boot msgs fly by. But when it tries to bring up X , the

screen blanks out with a msg 'Cannot display this video mode".

 

I don't have a graphics card, (using the default on the motherboard, something

from Intel).

 

My question is, should I buy a graphics card? Or can I just change the settings in

my linux machine to make it work with the monitor.

 

Thanks,

-ravi

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welcome to the board!

 

you'll need to change the settings. you're just using settings that your monitor doesn't like.

 

when you get the message "cannot display this video mode" trying hitting CTRL+ALT+F1, and if you get a login prompt login as root and run XFdrake. here you can change the monitor settings to match the monitor you have connected (vertical sync, horizontal refresh, resolution, etc.)

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Guest ravikumar

This helped. Thanks. I had to select 1024x960, 8bb (don't know what 8bb means). Other settings gave

blurred images. However, even with this, the graphics (logos etc.) appear garbled. However if I open an

rxvt terminal, I can get work done. One thing that comes to mind is that XFdrake does not allow all parameters

to be altered. (for example hsync/vsync frequencies etc.) If I choose to make the modifications to X86Config

file manually, how do I restart 'X'? Rebooting each time takes a long time. In other words, I need a 'test' mode

that XFDrake provides to experiment with other attributes of the monitor settings.

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you'll probably want to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf if you're using a more recent Mandriva version as they switched to Xorg. To restart X you can probably just press CTRL+ATL+BKSP, although if that doesn't work use the CTRL+ALT+F1 i mentioned earlier and do

service dm restart

as root user.

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