New monitor, no X

[gschimek]

I know I've had this problem before, but it's been so long I can't remember what to do.

I just put a different monitor onto my linux box running Redhat 9.0 I haven't made any other hardware changes. The box boots fine to the command line, and then when I try to startx, my monitor goes into Standby and says "Sync out of Range" I've tried running redhat-config-xfree86 and it does the same thing.

The old monitor was a 19" CTX and was set to run at 1280x1024. The new one is a 17" Dell, which can easily run at that resolution if needed.

I remember a command line menu driven configuration tool that I used a long time back. That may have been RH8, though.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[gschimek]

OK, the good news is that I figured it out. I found the configuration file /etc/X11/XF86Config and edited the section on the monitor to match the Display Size, Vertical and Horizontal sync rates of my new monitor.

But if anyone can remember that config tool that I'm thinking about. It would bring up a list of menus. You'd choose your keyboard, then your mouse, then your video card, enter the amount of video memory, etc.

Thanks.

[timothykaine]

Originally posted by gschimek
But if anyone can remember that config tool that I'm thinking about. It would bring up a list of menus. You'd choose your keyboard, then your mouse, then your video card, enter the amount of video memory, etc.

Many RPM based distros have the tool SaX or SaX2.

Try running "sax2" from console, if youre current.

[cloud8]

I also just switched from a CRT to an LCD(it's a dell too). I'm glad you got it working, but maybe my story can help out others who are having the same problem.
I have a radeon 7200 video card and I wanted to use a DVI connection with open source radeon or ati drivers(so I could have 2d/3d acceleration). My LCD would just go into standby upon starting X, which I think is its way of saying the input signal is bad or out of range.
I used sax2, which correctly identified everything, but still gave me an unusable configuration (Using xorg on SuSE 9.2 btw).
Switching to the vesa xorg driver worked, however. To get the radeon driver working I discovered it needed the following in the "Device" section of xorg.conf:
Option "MonitorLayout" "TMDS"
This magically made the preset vesa video modes (800x600, 1280x1024, etc) to work without having to even enter special timings. sax2 failed because it didn't put the option in xorg.conf. I don't know, but you might also try putting it in the "ServerLayout" section if your video driver doesn't support that option or a similar option. Maybe the option causes the signal to be altered for a DVI cable or something. I'm not sure it's the problem you had, but maybe someone else will find it helpful.

[stumbles]

Originally posted by gschimek
OK, the good news is that I figured it out. I found the configuration file /etc/X11/XF86Config and edited the section on the monitor to match the Display Size, Vertical and Horizontal sync rates of my new monitor.

But if anyone can remember that config tool that I'm thinking about. It would bring up a list of menus. You'd choose your keyboard, then your mouse, then your video card, enter the amount of video memory, etc.

Thanks.

If your running XFree I think it's something like "XFree86" though that one is not the one that askes the question. It's been so long since I have run xfree I forget.

For XOrg, the one that asks the questions is "/usr/X11R6/bin/xorgconfig". I prefer the command "/usr/X11R6/bin/xorgcfg". The file is cleaner looking and it puts in all the "Options" (disabled) for my video card (ATI 9000) so I don't have remember the syntax.


Ahh, "xf86config" ?

[XiaoKJ]

its xf86config and xf86cfg... just change xf86 and xorg.

I prefer editing by hand