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X11 On Hi-Resolution TFT Displays?
jesyntax asks: "Does anyone know how to get my 1280x1024 TFT working in Linux? When loading RedHat Linux 7.0 on my Gateway Solo 9300 laptop, I cannot seem to get it to go to graphics mode. The Linux installer does not detect the video hardware and when setting the 'settings' manually, the choices do not make sense for a laptop (TFT or LCD). I could not find a usable choice in the settings anywhere, but some TFT and LCD screens were listed in the options. These flat screens do not have a scan frequency per-se because they do not have to draw the lines on the screen as with a CRT monitor. Instead they have a fixed number of transistors which makes them not have lines but dots. There was no way in the manual settings to specify this."
XF4 seems to be VERY smart when presented with a decent chipset. My ATI Rage Pro IIc AGP lets me do this:
Works like a charm. This is a 1024x768 TFT screen but I don't see how it'd be any different on bigger (and nicer, you bastard) screens. :-)
a quick search revealed the following:
http://www.pintus.de/ilu/solo9300.html#x11
http://www.geocities.com/psilon001/Solo9300.htm
that second link basically says, that he told the installer that he was using a 17" monitor capable of 1280x1024. I don't see why that wouldn't work.. you could probably tell it to use whatever sync rates it wants... I remember having to do something like that on my laptop when 1024x768 was new.
-andy
on my laptop with a 1024x768 screen i use vesafb, so X11 setup consists of telling it 'i'm using vesafb, use the fbdev server at 1024x768 and 24-bit'... vesafb supports 1280x1024, so if your laptop's video card does vesa 2, you should be in luck... its not accelerated or anything though which is a problem for some.
Need a Catering Connection
The usual method, which I have had sucess with, is to simply ignore the refresh rates, and specify in your favorite Distro's X configuration program that you have a 1200x1024 or whatever monitor.
. html suggests a change to lilo.conf to initialise the adapter on boot.
Searching google suggest that people have some difficulties with the card on this laptop (not the screen per se) http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~steveh/inspiron/gw9300
Welcome to the world of making linux work on less than generic hardware. It's not as bad as that last snetence makes it sound actually, and is getting better all the time.
What you need to do is search ont he web and find people who have already done it and posted their results. And if you find anyhting new, post it yourself. I'd do it for mine, except for my laptop I can't better the work of Graham Williams!
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I'm now using Xfree86 4.02 on my laptop.
I used Xfree86 -configure to grab all those values and create a working XF86Config. It will grab your monitor's specs from the video card (yep, it worked on my TFT and my 19 inch CRT at home). If you're using SuSE, SaX2 is a frontend to this, and is quite cool, giving you a lot of control.
I'd suggest giving it a try, you'll probably get working modelines.