Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2012 08:38:06 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman <matthew@FreeBSD.org> To: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: question about my new Dell 3010 Message-ID: <50C44DEE.6040601@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <20121209002330.GA8528@ethic.thought.org> References: <20121209002330.GA8528@ethic.thought.org>
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This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enig0E0A7CDA5760B226717781E0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 09/12/2012 00:23, Gary Kline wrote: > one of the remaining problems --hopefuully the Last-- with my=20 > Dell 3010 quad i5 is that the resolution stops at 5:4. it's > something like 1280x1014 whereas my widescreen Dell needs > 1920x1280 or close to that. do I need to go out and find a > videocard? or is there a way of taking my 6GB of RAM and giving=20 > it to the video? Do you have a DVI connector on your current graphics card, or just the old style VGA connector? Pretty much all modern widescreen monitors will have a DVI connector as well as the legacy VGA. If you don't know what those are, see this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DVI_Connector_Types.svg Most DVI monitor cables have a DVI-D dual link plug on them, but anything matching those patterns is proof positive of DVI. VGA connectors looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vga-cable.jpg Anyhow, the point is if you're using a DVI connector, X will be able to query the monitor and find out its preferred resolution etc. automatically. Whereas with a VGA connector, it will default to using one of the standard VGA series of resolutions. All monitors will support some sort of VGA resolution for backwards compatibility -- typically 1024x768@60Hz -- and many will support higher, but all of the VGA series resolutions are 4:3 aspect ratio which doesn't look very nice on a widescreen monitor. There's two ways to fix the problem. 1) Get a video card with a DVI connector, or at least a DVI-to-DVI monitor cable if your card already has that. Apart from the hassle of getting a new video card that will work happily with X, this should be pretty painfree. 2) Edit your Xorg.conf to add a custom mode that matches what your monitor expects. Back in the days of CRTs this was a potentially risky thing to do, as configuring the video mode wrongly could phsically damage your monitor. Modern flatscreens however will just put up a message saying the input is incompatible. Working out what the right parameters are to put in the mode definition is the tricky bit. You may be able to use xrandr to pull them out (but if xrandr could do it, then X would do it automatically too...) There should be documentation that comes with the monitor, or you may find a kind soul online with the same make and model of monitor who will send you some xrandr output. Cheers, Matthew --=20 Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey --------------enig0E0A7CDA5760B226717781E0 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.16 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with undefined - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlDETfUACgkQ8Mjk52CukIxfxACgiFogLNaZbjeIDOX53RHcZQJi lT8AmwY8IbwCOc2HfHUsLLGL1/wK7bzw =6Irn -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------enig0E0A7CDA5760B226717781E0--
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