enabling DDC in the face of broken monitors

[Mike A. Harris]

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 11:41:18 +0200 wrote:
> In Windows, I can get 800x600 at 100Hz. But with x.org, despite of configuring
> x.org properly, I can't get more than 800x600 at 85Hz...
> 
> Section "Monitor"
>         Identifier      "SyncMaster"
>         HorizSync       30-71
>         VertRefresh     50-160
>         Option          "DPMS"
> EndSection

Bug in video driver.  Try using MonitorLayout option.

> And vendor-provided .inf file says:
> 
> [sm783df.AddReg]
> HKR,"MODES\1280,1024",Mode1,,"30-71,50-160,+,+"
> 
> So I don't really know what's going on and/or how I can make it work to 100 hz
> in 800x600 mode and how windows can make it work, it the data is the same.

Windows can make it work, because the video driver in Windows was
written by the hardware vendor themselves, knowing they would not
sell any video hardware at all if they didn't make it work.  ;o)

In general, you can expect that just because something works in
Windows, doesn't mean anything about wether or not it works in
X, or "can work" in X, because the source code for the driver
in Windows is not the same source code for the driver in X.

You can make the drivers in X do anything they can do in Windows,
by fixing the driver to not have bugs.

> Writing a parser which extracts the relevant data from windows .inf files could help?

Not really.  The data in your config file matches it already.  If
you want such a utility however, grab inf2mondb.py from the
hwdata package in RHEL or Fedora Core.  It takes a .inf file and
spits out a one liner for each monitor found inside, which can
be pasted into MonitorsDB - a custom file used by various X config
utilities such as system-config-display and redhat-config-xfree86.
Other distros use this file also I believe for their own config
tools.

That isn't likely to help your particular problem however.