the great sony digital lcd ordeal

[Richard R. Sivernell]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:31:27 -0500
dep <dep at linuxandmain.com> wrote:

> hey, chilluns . . .
> 
> having a week ago posted here my dismay over my failure to get the 
> digital input of my gorgeous and nifty 23-inch wideview sony sdm-p232w 
> lcd panel to work, i thought i'd drop a note describing how i 
> ultimately made it into the incredible -- really! -- 1920x1200 fully 
> digital display it is today (and has been for the last 24 hours). i 
> figure that this will maybe help somebody sometime.
> 
> first let us consider the things that didn't work. these include, of 
> course, sax2, which in my estimation should never be allowed anywhere 
> near an XF86Config file. still, i tried -- sax2 must be good for 
> optimally configuring some monitor somewhere, and i hoped i'd gotten 
> lucky. i hadn't.
> 
> searching all over the web, i saw a post (from years ago) which said 
> that the digital registers are not covered by the radeon driver (i have 
> a radeon 9000 pro, a/k/a rv250), and that the ati drivers must be 
> installed. i got them and installed them, breaking so many things that 
> a complete inventory is still to be made. (i've uninstalled them, 
> reinstalled the kernel, modules, and xfree, and still some things that 
> used to work don't anymore.)
> 
> i found an XF86Config that somebody had cobbled together which he 
> claimed worked at achieving 1920x1200 on a dell notebook that had a 
> radeon chip in it. the remarkable thing about this file is that it was 
> assembled with no sense of order that i could find and that it 
> contained page after page of options the meaning of which were 
> mysteries to me. it did not work as listed, and close to 20 hours of 
> trying to tune it resulted in no improvement.
> 
> i then simply began to guess. the radeon manpage helped. as i added 
> things that didn't work and restarted x, i read the xfree log the way a 
> roman seer read chicken guts. usually there were no errors -- but there 
> was no image theough the digital input (though i got text, just fine 
> and very sharp, when x wasn't running).
> 
> then, last night, the xfree logfile divulged its secret. the edid 
> information it recorded from the monitor contained numbers that looked 
> strangely familiar:
> 
> (II) RADEON(0): Supported additional Video Mode:
> (II) RADEON(0): clock: 154.0 MHz   Image Size:  495 x 309 mm
> (II) RADEON(0): h_active: 1920  h_sync: 1984  h_sync_end 2016 
> h_blank_end 2120 h_border: 0
> (II) RADEON(0): v_active: 1200  v_sync: 1201  v_sync_end 1204 
> v_blanking: 1250 v_border: 0
> (II) RADEON(0): Supported additional Video Mode:
> (II) RADEON(0): clock: 162.0 MHz   Image Size:  495 x 309 mm
> (II) RADEON(0): h_active: 1600  h_sync: 1664  h_sync_end 1856 
> h_blank_end 2160 h_border: 0
> (II) RADEON(0): v_active: 1200  v_sync: 1201  v_sync_end 1204 
> v_blanking: 1250 v_border: 0
> (II) RADEON(0): Ranges: V min: 55  V max: 65 Hz, H min: 30  H max: 92 
> kHz, PixClock max 170 MHz
> 
> so i strung them together thusly:
> 
> "1920x1200" 154 1920 1984 2016 2120 1200 1201 1204 1250
> 
> and i was *almost* there. it was doing something goofy, though, giving 
> me a screen and a half. i went back to the logfile and found the 
> listing for the maximum pixel clock, which was 170, not 154. so:
> 
> "1920x1200" 170 1920 1984 2016 2120 1200 1201 1204 1250
> 
> bingo! screen worked through the digital input, and the difference was 
> the difference in wiping the vaseline off the lens. just incredible.
> 
> now, if i can get the frigging trackball to behave, and glx to work 
> again, i'll be a happy man.
> -- 
> dep
> 
> The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists
> have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them.
> 				    -- G.K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy"
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> Need to chat further on this subject? Check out #linux-users on
> irc.linux-sxs.org !

And the saga continuses, stay tuned. This almost like a soap opera. Can not wait.
Dennis you are so much like a pioneer.

cheers
-- 
Rick Sivernell
Dallas, Texas  75287
972 306-2296
res005ru at verizon.net
Registered Linux User

   .~.
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In Linux we trust!