If there’s anything I left out here, I can’t think what it would be, but feel free to contact me via e-mail Russ.
First, let’s not be arrogant, here. I needed considerable help from another guy at work because I’m a new-comer to Linux. What would have taken me at most 20 minutes at home on Windows XP, I probably would never have succeeded in figuring out at work under Linux. Besides, I like to write software; I hate screwing around with hardware. It’s why I watch video, listen to tunes, etc. on a Windows box at work since another Heculean effort by a colleague would be required to get that crap working on Linux and how long would it continue to work? Something I read on-line told me that my monitor set-up might not even work after the next rev of the Linux kernel.
I bought an NVIDIA GeForce card for my computer because the latter had come with an ATI Radeon and, despite vague claims to the contrary I found by Googling, dual-head cannot be easily achieved. The problem seems to be the twin head option; either no one knows the name of this option or the ATI card simply doesn’t recognize any revealed string. Anyway, I gave up even after involving work colleagues. For $70 at PC Club, I got the NVIDIA card with twice as much memory as the Radeon and it worked right off. After extracting the Radeon, I treated it like a dead rat and gingerly tossed it.
By myself, I got the monitor up and running in 640x480, thinking that was safe when 1280x1024 didn’, and it did work. At that point, my colleague came to the rescue; he spent about 20 minutes. For the first monitor, we didn’t install the NVIDIA driver and got one monitor working, but for dual-head, it is necessary.
You must install your NVIDIA driver—don’t use the Open Source one that Linux (SuSE at least) installs by default and which works fine for CRTs. In addition to the following settings in the xorg.conf file, you need to screw around with the monitor’s menu settings and auto-adjust. Last, the auto-adjust settings aren’t smart enough to remember the difference between being in text mode and in X. So, I’ve left mine in good stead for running the GUI since I don’ often need to do otherwise.
For one Hyundai L90D+ 19” LCD, the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file contains the following settings. Now, the modeline was complete hocus-pocus, composed by using The XFree86 Modeline Generator and using settings I copied down from the Hyundai support page; in particular, screen size in millimeters (376w x 301h), vertical refresh (31-80kHz) and horizontal refresh (56-75Hz). I think there were a couple of other parameters like aspect and clock frequency which my colleague merely guessed at.
Section "Modes" Identifier "Modes[0]" Modeline "1280x1024" 114.98 1280 1312 1744 1776 1024 1045 1055 1076 # 60Hz (other resolution modes unimportant since unused and may not even work...) EndSection ...other usual crap... Section "Monitor" DisplaySize 376 301 HorizSync 28-82 Identifier "Monitor[0]" ModeName "1280x1024@60HZ" Option "DPMS" VendorName "--> LCD" VertRefresh 50-60 UserModes "Modes[0]" EndSection Section "Device" BoardName "GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM)" BusID "1:0:0" Driver "nvidia" Identifier "Device[0]" Option "XaaNoOffScreenPixmaps" "on" Option "XaaNoPixmapCache" "on" Option "usevnc" "no" Screen 0 VendorName "NVidia" EndSection
This worked for a day, then I got a DVI-VGA converter (since Hyundai didn’t send a DVI cable with the monitor) and connected the second monitor and made the following changes.
For a second Hyundai L90D+ 19” LCD, the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file contains the following. You can see the problem: X doesn’t directly support a second monitor orthogonally; you have to trick it through noting this support in the driver definition. The bold facing shows the added lines. Only the Device section needed modification to support the second monitor.
Section "Device" BoardName "GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM)" BusID "1:0:0" Driver "nvidia" Identifier "Device[0]" Option "XaaNoOffScreenPixmaps" "on" Option "XaaNoPixmapCache" "on" Option "usevnc" "no" Option "TwinView" Screen 0 VendorName "NVidia" Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "28-82" Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh "50-60" Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf" Option "MetaModes" "1280.1024,1280x1024" EndSection
On monitor, the blue connector is input from computer, the green connector is output to headphone (if desired). A cable is supplied with each Hyundai monitor that has a green connector on one end and a blue on the other end.
+----------------------+ +----------------------+ | +------------------+ | | +------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | first | | | | second | | | | monitor | | | | monitor | | | | | | | | | | | +------------------+ | | +------------------+ | | blue green | | blue green | +----------------------+ +----------------------+ ^ ^ ^ | blue | | green blue | | | | | (unused or headphone) | +---------------------------+ | | | | +----------------------+ +------- >| green | green | | | computer | | | | | +----------------------+