Re: X

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Thu, 2 Dec 1999 will [at] south-of-heaven.demon.co.uk wrote:

> > I have an S3 Virge 4mb PCI card Xconfigurator refuses to set my video res
> > at 24 bit 1024x768. I can have 16 or 8 bit if I want. It recommends 16 bit
> > 1280x1024, which looks daft on a 15 monitor. I can't alt + in KDE to toggle
> > the resolution either. I've only had this problem since I changed from RH
> > 5.2 to 6.1. Any thoughts?
>
> I am now convinced RH6.1 is evil. Try checking your monitor specs are right in
> /etc/X11/XF86Config
> (Vert and Horiz rates)

In defence of RedHat (without it I would have no Mandrake! ;)..

X server configuration is complex, requiring experience ( not black magic
as some think), but there are a lot of common mistakes people make, and
common fallacies.

Firstly, vert horiz rates ( the associated xvidtune, which *is* the
spawn of the devil), dot clock rates, etc. are all about resolution as
opposed to colour depth. Colour depth has no affect on the output
resolution, although this is a remark I shall contradict in a minute ;),
the timing stuff is all to do with the video signal. Basically, TVs (
therefore monitors) are big oscillating things at the end of the day, and
resolution refresh rate is a virtue of the frequency of the video signal
you give it: higher frequencies equal greater resolution, greater refresh
rate or some combination of the two, depending on what you speed up. It is
these values which you can blow monitors up with, because if you oscillate
it too hard it burns out, like overclocking chips somewhat.

I would advise most people to setup the monitor rates once, from the
manual, and then leave them. You shouldn't need to fiddle with them,
unless you know what you're doing, until you get a new monitor.

The other rates you can set are to do with how fast you work the graphics
card in terms of bus speed. This *is* to do with colour depth, since
greater depth means more data passing down the bus between graphics RAM
and processor. This is why colour depth often drops at high resolutions:
the monitor is perfectly capable of showing the full colour range, but the
graphics card can't clock the data out of the RAM quickly enough.

After all that my point is.... well, if it runs in 1280x1024 (or, at
least, says it can) the horiz vert are set fine, and fiddling them won't
harm anything. I'm also perplexed as to why you're having this problem
after upgrading: you did upgrade, rather than reinstall? If so, RH
shouldn't have touched your configuration files, and everything should
still work. Reasons why it may not: updated X server (although a loss in
functionality would be hard to explain), updated XFree (different config
files? hmm, hard to believe too), etc. Did the installer say anything when
you upgraded, or did you not upgrade?

Cheers,

Alex.

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