[ale] replace monitor

[John Mills]

BoBo -

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, bo bo wrote:

> This evening my Mitsubishi 17FS monitor expired. The
> only temp monitor I have is a Packard Bell Model
> PB2160

I have a couple of those and find they are only good for about 800x600 - 
pretty doggy, I'm afraid. Easy to check with MsWin and the 'Display' 
control if you have a window-box around. (They sell for about $5.00 at the 
local thrift store, and if you need a $5.00 monitor, they're perfect.)

> On boot, everything runs OK, I see the normal script
> as Fedora loads, and just when normally the gui loads,
> the screen blacks out, while the machine runs fine. As
> I imagine the logon and password prompt (but cannot
> see at this point) I can type in name / pwd, and hear
> the machine activity, as it normally would.

Try a VT console: <CTRL><ALT><F1>, .... You should see a text-only console
login pane. <CTRL><ALT><F7> brings up the X11 GUI on my RH-7.3.

> Q: How can I force the machine (Fedora-core 1) to
> recognize the replacement monitor?

The suggestion you are trying to run the monitor beyond its speed 
capability is almost surely right, so "recognizing" the beast won't help. 
'Generic VGA'/'Generic Monitor' will probably play on it.

Most XFree86 configurations enable more than one screen resolution and 
<CTRL><ALT>+ or <CTRL><ALT>- cycles through the available settings. Try 
that and you will at least find out if you have an acceptably [low] 
defined resolution.

Naturally your desktop will look sh***y. You will need to either edit the
active version of 'xf86config' or use a friendly tool to resize the
display to your usable screen resolution. If the tool can figure out 
you're using the PB monitor, so much the better.

Maybe that will hold you till you can find a more functional replacement.

Regards.

 - John Mills
   1884 Ridgewood Dr, NE
   Atlanta, GA 30307-1166
   404.377.2577
   john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu