Problems with widescreen (16:9) under CentOS 5 w/ xorg-x11-drv-i810-1.6.5-9.40.el5

[Adam Jackson]

On 9/22/12 5:55 PM, Robert Heller wrote:

> First of all, using the VGA connection, the X server *refuses* to use
> any Modeline that is not a 4:3 aspect ratio.  It seems that the X
> server presumes that *all* VGA connected monitors are 4:3.  (All three
> of the new wide screen monitors do have 15-pin VGA connections, so this
> 'presumption' is obviously false, esp. since the monitors using DDC
> while connection via VGA are suggesting 16:9 mode lines.)

It's not the X server's fault.

The i810 driver, when it comes to output setup, is no better than the 
vesa driver.  It can only set modes that happen to be listed in the 
video BIOS, regardless of what the display happens to claim to support. 
  Since most 845 video BIOSes predate the wide availability of 16:9 
monitors, they naturally tend not to list any 16:9 modes.

RHEL5 (and therefore CentOS 5) does include an additional video driver 
for Intel graphics chips called 'intel' instead of 'i810', which does 
not have this limitation.  I don't recall offhand whether that version 
worked correctly with 8xx-series chips; it might, I don't think I went 
out of my way to disable that, but if it doesn't work you get to keep 
both pieces.

Alternatively, go search for 'i915resolution', which will allow you to 
override Intel VBIOS mode lists (and yes it does work on 8xx chips 
despite the name).

- ajax