Cranners said:
I just tried the Knoppix CD.
During initial boot the display reads 640x480
If I type in: Knoppix Screen=1280x1024 (as instructed) the monitor will
display "Out of range"
If I type in: Knoppix Screen=1280x720 the monitor displays 1024x768
during the startup sequence.
Once X-Windows loads the monitor displays 800x600.
At this point I can Pan horizontally and vertically with the mouse.
I have the most current Intel graphics drivers installed.
I found an interesting article here. Basically it claims there
can be some difficulties expressing 16:9 formats in the monitor EDID
information. But 1280 x 720 should not be causing a problem though,
as 1280 is divisible by 8.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDID
Some geeky crap follows, which you can ignore if you want.
Skip to after this section if you want...
*******
You can use Knoppix to get the raw 128 byte EDID from the monitor.
This is the recipe I just tried.
1) load this in the web browser that appears on the Knoppix desktop.
There may be a more recent version than this, and this is
the first one I could find.
http://theplanet.linux.tucows.com/files/console/system/read-edid.tar.gz
Select Save To Disk when prompted. The file will go into your home
directory.
2) Open a terminal session. That is the icon on the bar at the bottom, with
a monitor icon and the ">" in one corner. You will already be pointed to
your home directory. The web browser will dump the file in that home
directory.
3) Type these commands in the terminal session:
gzip -c -d read-edid.tar.gz | tar xf -
cd read-edid-1.3.2
make
sudo ./get-edid | ./parse-edid
sudo ./get-edid > my_edid
The first command unzips the files and puts them in a directory.
The second command places you in the new directory.
The third command compiles the programs.
The fourth command executes them. Two programs are used, and one
program is "piped" to the other. The sudo option in front of the
command, gives the get-edid program "root" permissions, so the
hardware in the computer can be accessed. Parse-Edid should show
the maximum resolution.
The fifth command places the 128 bytes of info from the monitor,
into the file "my_edid".
4) You can insert a floppy into your floppy drive. There should be
a floppy icon in the upper right of the Knoppix desktop. _Only_
click the icon when a floppy is placed in the drive, not before.
Clicking the floppy icon does a Unix mount command. Knoppix will
read a goodly portion of the floppy, before drawing a graphical
picture of what files are on the floppy.
There is a file icon on the lower desktop bar as well. Clicking one of
those (don't remember which one, and I'm back in Windows right now)
will open a picture of your home directory. (Could be the "home"
icon.) Drag and drop the "my_edid" file from your home directory
to the floppy. A popup menu will immediately appear, so do this
slowly and carefully. Don't move the mouse until you see the menu.
Then select "copy" from the menu. Now your edid info is on the floppy.
To be useful, the floppy should be in an MSDOS format, such as
you get by formatting the floppy in Windows. Knoppix should be
able to deal with the floppy in that state. Don't try formatting
the floppy in Knoppix (just a PITA).
Once copied, "close" the floppy window. _Wait_ up to 30 seconds
for any Knoppix file system accesses to the floppy to stop. Then
pop out the floppy. Now you can shut down Knoppix if you want.
5) Back in Windows, you can open the 128 byte file using a hex editor.
There is a free hex editor here. I use version 2.3 and I cannot
tell what version is currently being offered.
http://www.hhdsoftware.com/Family/hex-editor.html
You can wipe over the Hex Editor screen display and copy the
hexidecimal representation of the data. Paste into your news
reader and edit as appropriate.
An alternative to this, would be to use the Unix "strings" command,
and get a hex dump of the file that way. "man strings" would give
the options, and you'd want whatever option dumps hex. It could
be something like "strings -x my_edid > my_edid.txt" or
"strings -x my_edid" to see the hex dump on the terminal session
window.
This is my EDID. NEC 1765 monitor (4:3 aspect ratio, native 1280x1024)
00 ff ff ff ff ff ff 00 38 a3 21 66 01 01 01 01
1f 0d 01 03 08 22 1b 78 ea 2e e5 a4 57 4a 9c 25
11 50 54 bf ef 80 71 4f 81 80 01 01 01 01 01 01
01 01 01 01 01 01 30 2a 00 98 51 00 2a 40 30 70
13 00 52 0e 11 00 00 1e 00 00 00 fd 00 38 4b 1f
51 0e 00 0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00 fc 00 4e
45 43 20 4c 43 44 31 37 36 35 0a 20 00 00 00 ff
00 33 37 31 31 35 36 37 39 51 41 0a 20 20 00 05
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDID
Grabbing bytes 38 thru 53, gives 8 pairs of bytes.
Only the first two pairs contain intelligence.
Even though my monitor supports other resolutions,
these are the ones listed.
71 4f (7*16+1=113, *8=904, +248=1152), 4:3 aspect, lower bits 0f=15, +60=75Hz
81 80 (8*16+1=129, *8=1032, +248=1280), 5:4 aspect, lower bits 00=0, +60=60Hz
01 01 (six times) - likely meaning these bytes are unused.
The "71 4f" pair says 1152x864 at 75Hz. The "81 80" pair says 1280x1024 60Hz.
*******
I found this on the Microsoft page. If the EDID is
bad, then Windows will likely not be paying any
attention. The EDID could also be incorrect in some
way (such as not specifying 16:9 in byte 39).
One way to fix this, is to get the "monitor driver"
file, but since Goodmans offers no downloads, you're
screwed on that possibility. The monitor driver file
tells Windows the max res, which you hope would be
1280x7820 60Hz or whatever.
"Unable to Select a Higher Screen Area in Display Properties"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182595/en-us
While Powerstrip is mentioned as a way to fix it (in the
Wikipedia article), Powerstrip works best with ATI and Nvidia
video cards. The author of Powerstrip has not programmed it for
chips like 865G. I expect Nvidia and ATI may have adhered to
some standard for the necessary registers, making it easier to
write Powerstrip for those standalone video cards.
Paul
