Enabling VGA output on HP 2133 Using VESA driver

[Rick Bilonick]

I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 on an HP 2133 using the vesa driver. Neither the
chrome driver nor the via driver work with Via Chrome 9 video chipset.

But I cannot get any output through the VGA output to an external
monitor. If I plug the monitor into the vga port and start the notebook,
the computer "notices" by resizing the display on the lcd panel (making
it a higher resolution than the lcd can display so the bottom and right
sides are cutoff). But there is no display on the external monitor. I've
tried using xrandr but it displays the resolutions (but the refresh is
often shown as "0" which does not make sense). It only shows the
"default" display - never both the lcd and the vga output.

Is there anything I could add to the xorg.conf file that might enable
the vga port?

Rick B.