TwinMode CRT/TV Setup om Medion Titanium MD8000

[martinm_76]

I was all poised to ask some tough questions in this forum but decided to try the last few things I could think of before doing so. Here's the thing:

I wanted to have 1280x1024 on my CRT and 1024x768 (or 800x600) on my TV, but I seemed to only be able to get 1024x768 + 1024x768.

One of the first things I learned was that it didn't seem to be a good idea to have my monitor connected to the CRT port I had (farthest from the TV-Out connectors). When I moved it to the other CRT port I actually got this 1024x768 on both screens for the first time. Many unsuccessful attempts at getting past this followed.

Today I found that I had old values for SecondMonitor in my config file (Monitor changed some time ago) and turning EDIDs on for a short while provided me the right values (but no TV picture). Using the right values for the monitor I got slightly further but not 1280x1024. I had seen examples of config-files specifying more liberal definitions for TVs than 30-50 + 60 so I decided to take a gamle. Whaddaya know: If I set my TV to use 30-70 and 60-75 instead I *can* get 1280x1024 on my monitor (and probably higher too) while having 1024x768 on the TV. Yay!

This took a lot of time to get right so I though I would share it with the rest of you who hopefully can use at least parts of this.

Note: I don't think the Cursor / vibrance settings have anything to do with gettting this to work. I just copied them from another config file on this forum 'just-in-case'.

Parts of config file (full file follows):

Section "Monitor"
  Option       "CalcAlgorithm" "CheckDesktopGeometry"
  #DisplaySize  320 240
  #DisplaySize  280 210
  #HorizSync    30-50
  HorizSync    30-70
  #VertRefresh  60
  VertRefresh  60-75
  Identifier   "Monitor[0]"
  ModelName    "TV"
  VendorName   "YOKO"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Screen[1]"
  Device "Device[1]"
  Monitor "Monitor[0]"
  DefaultDepth 24
  Subsection "Display"
    Depth 24
    Modes      "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" "320x240" "320x200"
  EndSubSection
  Option "TwinView" "on"
  Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30-98"
  Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "50-120"
  Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"
  Option "UseEdidFreqs" "off"
  #Option "MetaModes" "1280x1024@1280x1024,1024x768; 1024x768@1024x768,1024x768@1024x768; 800x600@800x600,NULL; 640x480@640x480,NULL"
  #Option "MetaModes" "1024x768@1024x768,1024x768@1024x768; 800x600@800x600,1024x768@1024@768; 640x480@640x480,1024x768@1024x768"
  Option "MetaModes" "1280x1024@1280x1024,1024x768@1024x768; 1152x864@1152x864,1024x768@1024x768; 1024x768@1024x768,1024x768@1024x768; 800x600@800x600,NULL; 640x480@6
40x480,NULL"
  Option "ConnectedMonitor" "TV,CRT"
  Option "TvStandard" "PAL-G"
  Option "TvOutFormat" "Composite"
EndSection

Section "Device"
  BoardName    "0x0281" # GeForce Ti4200 AGP 8x
  BusID        "1:0:0"
  Driver       "nvidia"
  Identifier   "Device[0]"
  Screen       0
  Option       "Rotate" "off"
  VendorName   "NVidia"
  Option       "NvAgp" "1"
  Option        "DigitalVibrance" "0"
  Option        "SWCursor" "0"
  Option        "HWCursor"            "true"
  Option        "CursorShadow" "0"
  Option        "CursorShadowAlpha"   "64"
  Option        "CursorShadowXOffset" "2"
  Option        "CursorShadowYOffset" "1"
EndSection

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

[martinm_76]

Note: I made the above tests from within X, thus display :1 for testing. It shouldn't matter, though.

Note 2: I think it is rather odd that TwinView seems to mislabel the CRT and TV screens like this. Anyone have any idea as to why this happens? In my case, if the TV is connected at boot-time the booting process will take place on the TV, making it somewhat logical that the TV is the first device and yet...?

Driver version: 5336

The console *does* get garbled after running X. It has been ever since I got the TV working. I read somewhere that Int 10 should be loaded and it seems to me it is so what is wrong here..?