On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, Bob George wrote:
> "James Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > [...] This thing uses a wierd old ISA video card that powers the
> > attached, approx 9" LCD monitor, but it can also send display to an
> > external VGA monitor (db15 plug on it). At first, I got garbage
> output
> > from the LCD but fiddling with some of the dip switches got me a
> coherent
> > display. However, the display output only takes up about 3/4 of the
> > screen: at the top and bottom are horizontal black bands, where there
> is
> > no video output. [...]
>
> That sounds like what I experienced using a fixed-frequency monitor. I
> had a Sun monitor that would ONLY do 1280x1024. With an appropriate
> video card, I could use it on my PC, but until I was actually running at
> that resolution, the screen might be completely unreadable (i.e. in
> BIOS), or "squished" as you describe. Games etc. would play fine, but
> the display was definitely strange looking if using 800x600, and fuzzy
> ("stretched") at 640x480. And many laptop LCDs will do the similar
> things until at the "right" resolution.
>
Thanks for the input, Bob. I seem to have gotten it fixed, but it was not
really the sort of problem you've mentioned. I think what was happening
was that, because of invalid dipswitch settings I was trying to use, I was
getting video from the computer's BIOS rather than via the video card (my
poor understanding of video output may make my conclusion about this quite
erroneous). When I would use valid settings on the dipswitches, I would
get fullscreen output after the BIOS report (the BIOS report screen does
not use the upper and lower 1/6th of the screen, for whatever reason), but
it would be a bunch of garbled characters. It was not legible, though
from the patterns I could see on the screen, it was outputting something
at least similar in form to the Linux console. What seems to have turned
the garbled output into real, legible screen output with a black
background and readable text in the forground, was going into the
computer's BIOS and disabling video shadow ROM. So, it works fine in
console mode under Linux now: I just have to struggle with getting some
vga output.
Btw. We need to talk more about that fixed frequency monitor. I've been
dragging around a Sun 19" fixed freq monitor (gdm-1955a) I got at a resale
shop for $5 for about 4 years now. I think this one requires combined
(rather than multi) sync. I got a video card recently (Matrox) that
allows combined sync, and Linux should enable me to use the set
frequencies and resolution (1152x900, if memory serves) that the thing
requires. I also have the 13w3 to db15 adaptor cable for it. Maybe you
could help me finally get the thing working? Ah, the joys of computer
junk-collecting :)
Thanks, James
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