[TriLUG] AMD 64 bit laptop resolution RHEL 4 u2

[Alan Porter]

>AMD Athlon 64 Portable Workstation/Laptop
>    AMD Athlon 64  3000+, 3200+, and 3400+ Processor
>    17.0" TFT WSXGA+ LCD with up to 1680x1050 Resolution
>    Red Hat Linux Operating System
>    Internal ATA/100 Disk Drives and DVD-RW or CD-RW/DVD-ROM
>    8x AGP ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 3D Accelerator with 128MB DDR SGRAM
>Video Memory
>    Single Gigabit Ethernet Port and Up to Two USB 2.0 Ports
>    8.8 lb
>  
>

This sounds to me like an X-windows configuration problem.

You should be able to use either (1) the open source ATI driver
called "radeon" or (2) the proprietary ATI driver "fglrx".  The open
source one should already be loaded in your RHEL system.  To
get the fglrx driver, you'd need to download it from ATI (Ubuntu
offers the fglrx driver in a "restricted" package).

For now, we'll assume that you're using the open source driver,
because that's probably what came loaded on your system.

To get the proper resolution, you'll need to tweak your xorg.conf
(formerly XF86config) file.  Specifically, the "device" and "screen"
sections.

SAVE YOUR ORIGINAL XORG.CONF FILE FIRST!!
Then edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf (or XF86config).

Section "Device"
   Identifier   "my_video_card"
   Driver       "radeon"
   BusID        "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
   Identifier   "my_screen"
   Device       "my_video_card"
   Monitor      "my_monitor"
   DefaultDepth 24
   SubSection   "Display"
      Depth     24
      Modes     "1680x1050"
   EndSubSection
EndSection


Note that you'll have to change the Identifiers from "my_xxx"
to whatever your identifiers are.  The strings are not important,
but they must match each other.  I use "my_xxx" so I'll know
that they are not special key words.

After you've made your changes, restart X by pressing
ctrl-alt-backspace.  X will restart using your new xorg.conf
file.  Keep an eye on /var/log/Xorg.0.log.  It may have
warnings or errors.


Alan




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