Some time ago I bought a Club 3D graphics card which is Radeon 9200
based and has DVI and VGA outputs. With the kind assistance of various
people here, I eventually got it running X dual head with a 19" CRT and
a 15" LCD, both connected via analog (adapter on the DVI port).
I recently took advantage of an offer at Dell and bought a 20" TFT
which does 1600x1200 (a sine qua non for me for a big monitor) and has
DVI, expecting to have a dramatically improved viewing experience. A
book by Mr. Dickens comes to mind.
The grief started when I discovered that although it was a plug and
play scenario if I used the DVI-VGA adapter, when I tried to use the
DVI connection I was in a world of hurt. Eventually it became clear
that there was an incompatibility between my mobo (flashed to latest
BIOS) and the card - if the Dell monitor was connected via DVI, no
picture appeared on EITHER monitor, at BIOS, Linux or Windows.
So the monitor upgrade became a PC upgrade :-) This has removed the DVI
incompatibility, and I see a picture at BIOS level on the DVI (but not
on the VGA panel, which I presume is by design). Windows also works
perfectly. But Linux, with X.org, does anything but. It seems that the
Radeon driver extracts information from the monitor's DDC data and
then sends a signal which the monitor can't display.
Having spent MUCH time on this, with the kind assistance of Paul Jakma
I eventually could get a 1600x1200 display via fbdev. However, I still
can't get X running at that resolution (I suspect that fbset, and using
the X fb driver, might work, but I REALLY don't want to go there). The
next path of investigation is customising modelines but really, I
thought I had said goodbye to all that in 1999 or so.
Apart from crying on your collective shoulders, I was wondering would
anybody have constructive suggestions?
Oh BTW the monitor hardware seems to be OK. Works in Windows, works
when attached to Paul Jakma's box (he has the same monitor) and need I
add that when I plug it into my Powerbook with OS-X, It Just Works ?
Niall
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