Hi All,
I've got two issues mainly concerning hardware:
(1) I've recently bought an Asus W202S display (1680x1050) and connected that to my laptop (Asus X51, ATI Radeon Xpress 200M graphics, running the closed-source ATI X server).
Things basically work, but it takes some sort of "warm-up time" before the picture stably settles in -- initially, areas with a checkerboard raster (e.g. scroll bars of xterm and other Athena GUI applications, also the default meshwork pattern shown by X11 upon startup) are quite blurred. I can fix this by adjusting the "Phase" setting in the display's on-screen menu system, but the phase will drift, resulting in gradual build-up of blur, and it stabilises only after 20 minutes or so.
I wonder whether there might be some Modeline hack or similar to generate a video signal that the display can lock on to reliably, regardless of some drift.
In text (console) mode the display doesn't work ideally either, the display "sees" 1024 x 768 while the laptop's display shows 1280 x 800 (and presumably also sends that through the external monitor interface), so some amount of stuff is cut away from the margins. I've tried everything with the on-screen menus of the display (there isn't very much), to no avail -- so is there anything on the Linux side of this that I could try?
(2) On a completely different topic, I have an optical mouse which seems to have a sensor problem, the mouse pointer is jumping and dancing wildly, with some trend (towards the lower left, I think). Some mice I had used to do something similar when slightly lifted from the surface. Is there any more or less known fix for such malfunctions?
Best regards & thanks in advance for any comments, Jan
On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Jan T. Kim jtk@cmp.uea.ac.uk wrote:
Hi All,
I've got two issues mainly concerning hardware:
(1) I've recently bought an Asus W202S display (1680x1050) and connected that to my laptop (Asus X51, ATI Radeon Xpress 200M graphics, running the closed-source ATI X server).
Things basically work, but it takes some sort of "warm-up time" before the picture stably settles in -- initially, areas with a checkerboard raster (e.g. scroll bars of xterm and other Athena GUI applications, also the default meshwork pattern shown by X11 upon startup) are quite blurred. I can fix this by adjusting the "Phase" setting in the display's on-screen menu system, but the phase will drift, resulting in gradual build-up of blur, and it stabilises only after 20 minutes or so.
I wonder whether there might be some Modeline hack or similar to generate a video signal that the display can lock on to reliably, regardless of some drift.
In text (console) mode the display doesn't work ideally either, the display "sees" 1024 x 768 while the laptop's display shows 1280 x 800 (and presumably also sends that through the external monitor interface), so some amount of stuff is cut away from the margins. I've tried everything with the on-screen menus of the display (there isn't very much), to no avail -- so is there anything on the Linux side of this that I could try?
I'd like to think a modern distribution would be pre-configured to use the "Preferred Mode" as reported in the monitor's EDID. Debian based distributions have a package called read-edid. This allows you to run: get-edid | parse-edid which spits out some data including a mode line like this: Mode "1600x1200" # vfreq 60.000Hz, hfreq 75.000kHz DotClock 162.000000 HTimings 1600 1664 1856 2160 VTimings 1200 1201 1204 1250 Flags "+HSync" "+VSync" EndMode
Hope this helps! Tim.
On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 18:28 +0100, Jan T. Kim wrote:
Things basically work, but it takes some sort of "warm-up time" before the picture stably settles in -- initially, areas with a checkerboard raster (e.g. scroll bars of xterm and other Athena GUI applications, also the default meshwork pattern shown by X11 upon startup) are quite blurred. I can fix this by adjusting the "Phase" setting in the display's on-screen menu system, but the phase will drift, resulting in gradual build-up of blur, and it stabilises only after 20 minutes or so.
The Meshwork pattern shown by X11 can often cause strange banding problems as it collides quite often with the pixel depth of your display and gives a similar effect to if people on telly are allowed to wear stripey clothes.
The Phase drift is a problem that sounds like a fault (either by design or component failure)...the phase clock should be stable.
I wonder whether there might be some Modeline hack or similar to generate a video signal that the display can lock on to reliably, regardless of some drift.
Yes the trick Tim suggested may get you there...if not then have a look in the documentation that came with the screen.
Generally I find that stabbing the autosetup and if available the store option for each resolution I want to run at is enough for my screens. Also if it is a removable VGA cable and seems thinner than say the mains cable you might want to consider replacing it..some of the bundled cables have hopeless screening which can lead to all sorts of problems.
(2) On a completely different topic, I have an optical mouse which seems to have a sensor problem, the mouse pointer is jumping and dancing wildly, with some trend (towards the lower left, I think). Some mice I had used to do something similar when slightly lifted from the surface. Is there any more or less known fix for such malfunctions?
Patterned mousemat ? Optical mice I find are best without a mat all together, the PTFE "feet" assuming they are still present and clean will stop scratching of the surface and generally with the exception of glass tables I just find mice work better this way. Oh and it if looks grubby clean the "eye" with a slightly moistened qtip...sometimes dust gets inside the mouse on the lens as well, but at the point you are taking these things apart you might just want to consider replacing it.
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Jan T. Kim -
Tim Green -
Wayne Stallwood