Changing resolution on laptop

[Dotan Cohen]

On 12/02/07, Aaron Konstam <akonstam at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-02-12 at 16:40 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > I've a Dell E1505 laptop with a 1050*1400 resolution LCD screen, and a
> > regular external CRT monitor that can display video up to 768*1024.
> > I'd like to plug the monitor into the laptop's output, but I need the
> > output to display 768*1024. How would one go about ensuring that the
> > correct resolution is used depending on whether or not the monitor is
> > connected?
> >
> > Googling about led me to a bash script that changes screen resolution,
> > but I'd prefer something automatic: LCD always get 1050*1400 and the
> > CRT always gets 768*1024.
> >
> > Thanks in advance for any ideas.
> >
> This is not exactly automatic but its use depends on the answer to the
> following question. When you plug in the external monitor does the
> internal lcd screen cease working, If so one might do this.
> <ctrl><Alt> + cycles through resolutions in your xorg.conf so if you had
> the resolutions you mention above in your xorg.conf file it would be
> easy to switch between them.

It only drives one display at a time, so I could switch between
resolutions. My xorg.conf file has no screen resolutions:
# Xorg configuration created by pyxf86config

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "Default Layout"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
	InputDevice    "Synaptics" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
	Option	    "XkbModel" "pc105"
	Option	    "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Synaptics"
	Driver      "synaptics"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto-dev"
	Option	    "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
#	Option	    "UseShm" "true"
	Option	    "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Videocard0"
	Driver      "vesa"
#	Driver      "radeon"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Videocard0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Googling around leads me to believe that the "screen" section should
have a line like this within the SubSection "Display":
Modes        "1050x1400" "1024x768"
But I constructed that line myself and I'd like others to verify that
it won't melt my LCD before I stick it in there. Thanks.

Dotan Cohen

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