REPOST : VDQ Display (FC4 & ViewSonic VG910b)

[Tim]

On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 15:49 -0500, Beartooth SenectoFlatuloid wrote:

> I had to put a new  monitor into a home LAN containing three FC4 machines
> which I run behind a KVM switch : an ASUS with a Maxtor 6E040L0 hard drive
> (which has never been a problem), and two old P2s which serve as backups.
>
> Nevertheless, first one old P2 and then the other fails to display
> properly: I got one set so that it worked, after much switching of the GUI
> display control between VG910b and generic LCD 1280x1024, and much editing
> of /etc/X11/xorg.conf ; then I tried doing the same with the other. Now it
> displays usably, but the first old P2 does not!
> 
> If I simply scp my /etc/X11/xorg.conf from one of the machines that work
> into the problem machine, it doesn't work there;

If these PCs have different graphics cards, they're going to need
different X config files.  They don't just set the monitor resolution,
they also set which video drivers are going to be used.

> By "doesn't take" I mean the entries in the file are changed, but the
> display isn't right, and the GUI for setting the display (Main Menu >
> Desktop > System Settings > Display) fails to reflect them. It seems
> addicted to 800x600 a/o 640x480 and 256 colors. This persists whether
> DefaultDepth under "Section Screen" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf is set to 8, 16,
> or 24.

Sounds awfully like you're using a generic video driver than one
specifically for your video display chipset.

> But the ViewSonic VG910b is 1280x1024 with millions of colors.
> 
> (It's actually a rich man's monitor, out of my class: a 19" flat panel;
> but it was the only one the store had that was listed under the hardware
> tab in the GUI for the display.

You're not forced to use the monitors listed in the display tab.  Those
are just the ones it has preset configuration options for (supported
resolutions, screen sizes, refresh rates, etc.).  You can hand-configure
X to run for all sorts of different values, and there's lots of monitors
that use the same ones as each other.

> I learned, eventually, by much trial and error, that I have to unplug
> not only the monitor but also the keyboard and mouse from the KVM switch
> and connect all three directly to each machine I want to run, before I
> can configure the display on it.

You probably want to say what particular KVM you're using, some are
quite crap, and people using them can tell you more about that.  While I
understand, quite obviously, why you need to directly connect a VDU for
the system to automatically configure itself (it's common enough for the
VDU identification data to not get passed through other things), I don't
see why that problem exists with keyboard and mouse.  You want the
computer set up to work as the KVM box works, some don't directly pass
keyboard and mouse through, but act as an interface with its own
characteristics (as if they were a keyboard and mouse, for the PC,
remotely controlled by yours).

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