[ale] Laptop resolution issues

[Stephen Touset]

I'm in a bind, folks. I recently got a new old laptop, and have been in
the process of setting up Linux on it. There were some quirks with
framebuffering, but I finally settled with a 1600x1200 resolution
console (seeing as I couldn't get anything else, besides the default).

Here's the problem, though. Now whenever I boot, my resolution seems to
be "fixed" at 1600x1200 (even during POST), with everything being
displayed in a small 640x480 (possibly 800x600) window, centered inside
the display. I can use fbset to change back to a 640x480 console
(virtual, anyways...there still seems to be 1600x1200 resolution in
screen space, but I can only see 640x480 of it, the rest goes off the
bottom of the screen), but this only lasts ephemerally. If I change VTs
or reboot, I get the same problem again.

Notice, that this isn't a problem within Linux. I believe that somehow I
actually changed the "native" resolution of my LCD display, so it's
displaying normal 640x480 content in a 1600x1200 display. However, all
my attempts to resolve this problem have failed.

I believe this is related to my use of the framebuffer. The only thing I
can mention of note that might have caused this problem is that I was at
a 1600x1200 console and closed the lid. After a few seconds, the display
went off. When I came back, I couldn't get the display to turn on, so I
pressed the power button and the machine shut itself down. Upon reboot,
I started experiencing this problem.

It's a Dell Inspiron 4150, with a ATi Radeon Mobile M6 graphics card, in
case the information helps.

-- 
Stephen Touset <stephen at touset.org>
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