No TwinView on Dell Inspiron 1520

[ptr]

Hi all,

I searched everywhere, I had Dell change my motherboard, I changed cables and monitors and operating systems, but I'm still not able to output video to the VGA port on my Inspiron 1520.

When I start nvidia-settings and hit "Detect Displays" all it finds is a "CRT-0" with the only available resolutions of 640x480 and 320x400, which I find is a bit odd when connected to a modern Samsung TV (1360x768) or Dell FP monitor (1280x800.)

Does anybody except me have a problem configuring TwinView on his or her Inspiron?

Thanks for any hints / notes, better yet, solution.

Peter

[oakld]

Originally Posted by ptr

Does anybody except me have a problem configuring TwinView on his or her Inspiron?
Peter

I have same problem on my laptop FS Amilo 3438G - GeForce 6800Go 256MB, 1440x900 internal DFP, external 1024x768 DFP TV. It works very well in Windows (just tried few days ago), I can set anything, i.e. position of screens, resolution,... It works in Linux as well (in "Clone" mode) but only UNTIL the X server starts. Then the other screen goes off. I can set it in Yast, but the settings doesn't work, it only messes up the configuration and the only "achievment" is that the primary screens goes black and the secondary works.
So I turned it off there and tried to set it up manually in xorg.conf, using [0] and [1] identifiers rather than "SaxDual" stuff. No success either. And when I start "NVIDIA X server settings" I get a ridiculous message "You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver. Please edit your X configuration file (just run 'nvidia-xconfig' as root) and restart the X server.", after which there isn't anything to edit in the dialog, except few checkboxes on the default page. Of course I do have nvidia drivers, but maybe this little application is confused by a driver installed by SuSE one-click-install package, not by nvidia script.

# xrandr -q
 SZ:    Pixels          Physical       Refresh
*0   1440 x 900    ( 373mm x 231mm )  *50
Current rotation - normal
Current reflection - none
Rotations possible - normal
Reflections possible - none

# lspci | grep Force
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV41.8 [GeForce Go 6800] (rev a2)

Drivers:
nvidia-gfxG01-kmp-default-100.14.19_2.6.22.5_30-1.1
x11-video-nvidiaG01-100.14.19-4

The driver itself works fine:

[> /usr/bin/glxgears
28619 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5723.755 FPS

Part of xorg.conf:

Section "Module"
  Load         "glx"
  Load         "type1"
  Load         "extmod"
  Load         "dbe"
  Load         "freetype"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
  Option       "CalcAlgorithm" "XServerPool"
  DisplaySize  367 230
  HorizSync    30-70
  Identifier   "Monitor[0]"
  ModelName    "AUO LCD MONITOR"
  Option       "DPMS"
  VendorName   "AUO"
  VertRefresh  43-60
  UseModes     "Modes[0]"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
  Option       "CalcAlgorithm" "XServerPool"
  DisplaySize  367 230
  HorizSync    30-70
  Identifier   "Monitor[1]"
  Option       "DPMS"
  VertRefresh  43-60
  UseModes     "Modes[1]"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
  Identifier   "Modes[0]"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
  Identifier   "Modes[1]"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      15
    Modes      "1440x900" "1024x768" "800x600" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      16
    Modes      "1440x900" "1024x768" "800x600" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      24
    Modes      "1440x900" "1024x768" "800x600" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      8
    Modes      "1440x900" "1024x768" "800x600" 
  EndSubSection
  Device       "Device[0]"
  Identifier   "Screen[0]"
  Monitor      "Monitor[0]"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      24
    Modes      "1024x768" "800x600" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      8
    Modes      "1024x768" 
  EndSubSection
  Device       "Device[0]"
  Identifier   "Screen[1]"
  Monitor      "Monitor[1]"
EndSection

Section "Device"
  BoardName    "GeForce Go 6800"
  BusID        "3:0:0"
  Driver       "nvidia"
  Identifier   "Device[0]"
  Screen       0
  VendorName   "NVIDIA"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier   "Layout[all]"
  InputDevice  "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
  InputDevice  "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
  InputDevice  "Mouse[3]" "SendCoreEvents"
  Option       "Clone" "off"
  Option       "Xinerama" "on"
  Screen       "Screen[0]"
  Screen       "Screen[1]" LeftOf "Screen[0]"
EndSection

I'm trying to solve this for about a yer. I tried tens of tutorials and configurations and still no success. And the problem must be simple, somewhere in the Xorg configuration, because only when the X server starts, the things go wrong. I.e. if I start linux with "level 3" kernel option, I get nice working "Clone" mode (same content on both screens). When I run sax2 here, it says that no X server is running (of course) and that it will start it's own, then it reads the xorg.conf and the second screen goes black...

[oakld]

Any ideas? Anybody?

[oakld]

[ptr]

Well, unfortunately I don't have a solution to either your or my problem. Next thing to test is TwinView on Wind*ws, which I have to install on a different disk first. Also, runlevel 3 (text mode) is untested. I will keep you posted.
All I can confirm at this point is that I rule out a hardware error as the motherboard is new.

Let's hope there's still a solution we didn't think of, yet.

[ptr]

Phew, this is getting tedious.

I installed Ubuntu 7.10 (again) and the latest nvidia driver. Fired up nvidia-settings after connecting a Dell 19" monitor. All I could select was 320x200 / 640x480 / Auto. Selected "Auto", restarted X and fired up nvidia-settings. _Now_ I could select 1280x1024 and several other resolutions.

OK.

Installed Fedora 8, same procedure until I restarted X. After that no sign of more than the aforementioned resolutions.

Last test I did was on Vista. After installation of the nvidia drivers I could switch to several display resolutions.

What I really do not understand is that until some weeks ago, every time I plugged in an external monitor it could be identifid by EDID. This seems to be impossible now on either OS. Vista says "non-pnp monitor", both Linuxes say "CRT-0" instead of "Dell blah".

I guess I'll have to switch my operating system, and no, it will not be Vista.

Oh well.