On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 10:34:47PM -0400, Matt Price wrote:
> If someone can walk me through the basics I'd be very grateful.
> Do I need to add an extra screen, an extra monitor, some kind of a
> switch somewhere in the config... really, I can't tell you how
> much I would appreciate this -- I was absolutely humiliated in
> class today when my laptop wouldn't display on the external vga --
> after all my sweat and tears getting debian to install at all in
> the 24 hours btwn when my laptop busted and when I had to get up
> in front of my students...

Sorry about that...

Anyway, I have a Thinkpad R51 (2883). Video is supported under the
i815 driver. I plug my external monitor in after the machine POSTs;
my BIOS will choose the external as the main video display if it's
plugged in before POST.

| Section "Device"
| Option "DevicePresence" "true"
| Option "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
| Option "Clone" "true"
| Option "VBERestore" "true"
| Identifier "Card0"
| Driver "i810"
| VendorName "Intel Corp."
| BoardName "82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device"
| BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
| EndSection

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o--------------------------{ Will Maier }--------------------------o
| jabber:..wcmaier@jabber.ccc.de | email:..........wcmaier@ml1.net |
| \.........wcmaier@cae.wisc.edu | \..........wcmaier@cae.wisc.edu |
*---[ Debian: The Universal Operating System (www.debian.org) ]----*


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--On 25 October 2005 22:34 -0400 Matt Price wrote:

> Hi folks -- after much straining I have a working debian/sid install
> on my new (recycled) laptop. a thinkpad 600E with neomagic nm220 video
> chipset. I have a working xorg.conf which unfortunately does not
> support the external vga.

This won't really help you. But on my TP600E, with XFree86, when I plugged
it into a data projector it worked perfectly first time. I did have to
press whichever Fn-key it is to enable the external monitor.

Martin Bright

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Martin Bright
Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Liverpool


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Hi,

> Anyway, I have a Thinkpad R51 (2883). Video is supported under the
> i815 driver. I plug my external monitor in after the machine POSTs;
> my BIOS will choose the external as the main video display if it's
> plugged in before POST.

Is there a way to change the main video display (for overlay to work)
without going back to the BIOS (i.e. without rebooting)?

Martin Bright wrote:
> --On 25 October 2005 22:34 -0400 Matt Price wrote:
>
>> Hi folks -- after much straining I have a working debian/sid install
>> on my new (recycled) laptop. a thinkpad 600E with neomagic nm220 video
>> chipset. I have a working xorg.conf which unfortunately does not
>> support the external vga.
>
>
> This won't really help you. But on my TP600E, with XFree86, when I
> plugged it into a data projector it worked perfectly first time. I did
> have to press whichever Fn-key it is to enable the external monitor.

I have found that Xorg sometimes blocks the BIOS calls to switch the
VGA output on. Matt, you could try the following quick-and-dirty trick
to circumvent Xorg: Switch to a tty console with e.g. + +
and see if you can then activate the external output via the BIOS
key combination (which is + on a lot of notebooks). If that
works you can try to restart Xorg without switching from the console
("startx" or "sudo /etc/init.d/kdm restart", etc. depending on your
installation). I have found that Xorg then tends to honor the state of
the VGA output and normally manages to negotiate a suitable display mode
with an attached beamer or monitor. (I have a different notebook and
graphics card, though, your mileage may vary.)

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Florian


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On Tuesday 25 October 2005 9:34 pm, Matt Price wrote:
> Hi folks -- after much straining I have a working debian/sid install
> on my new (recycled) laptop. a thinkpad 600E with neomagic nm220 video
> chipset. I have a working xorg.conf which unfortunately does not
> support the external vga. I vaguely recall having had to do something
> to enable the "switch to external vga" key on my last laptop, (Fn-F7
> on this model) but that last laptop is unfortunately on the garbage
> heap now so I can't check my config file.
>
> If someone can walk me through the basics I'd be very grateful. Do I
> need to add an extra screen, an extra monitor, some kind of a switch
> somewhere in the config... really, I can't tell you how much I would
> appreciate this -- I was absolutely humiliated in class today when my
> laptop wouldn't display on the external vga -- after all my sweat and
> tears getting debian to install at all in the 24 hours btwn when my
> laptop busted and when I had to get up in front of my students...
>
> anyway, enough sob story, thx for the help,
>
> matt

Although I cannot specifically address your question (my IBM TP 600E is long
gone), the 600E is one of the most well documented machines in the Linux
world. You might want to do a search for the archives of the Linux ThinkPad
Yahoo group, as well as checking the Tux-Mobile site. I know that I used to
find almost anything that I needed through these resources.

Good luck!

--
Rob Smith


Composed in KMail - Support Open Source
Software for a Free World
Registered Linux User #337445

http://counter.li.org/


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thank you...

On 10/25/05, Will Maier wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 10:34:47PM -0400, Matt Price wrote:
> > If someone can walk me through the basics I'd be very grateful.
> > Do I need to add an extra screen, an extra monitor, some kind of a
> > switch somewhere in the config... really, I can't tell you how
> > much I would appreciate this -- I was absolutely humiliated in
> > class today when my laptop wouldn't display on the external vga --
> > after all my sweat and tears getting debian to install at all in
> > the 24 hours btwn when my laptop busted and when I had to get up
> > in front of my students...
>
> Sorry about that...
>
> Anyway, I have a Thinkpad R51 (2883). Video is supported under the
> i815 driver. I plug my external monitor in after the machine POSTs;
> my BIOS will choose the external as the main video display if it's
> plugged in before POST.
>
> | Section "Device"
> | Option "DevicePresence" "true"
> | Option "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
> | Option "Clone" "true"
> | Option "VBERestore" "true"
> | Identifier "Card0"
> | Driver "i810"
> | VendorName "Intel Corp."
> | BoardName "82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device"
> | BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
> | EndSection
>

well, that was cool, and I am learning from this. Unfortunately those
are device-specific options, and my machine uses the neomagic driver,
which doesn't accept any of these. Nonetheless: I have a
quasi-functional xorg.conf! I have done the following:

define a second monitor "External Monitor" with a very basic configuration.
define a second screen "VGA Out", again with a minimal configuration,
mostly copied from my default screen
add the line:
Screen "VGA Out" do my default X layout.

Now I can switch back and froth between the two using the BIOS toggle
key (fn-F7 for me).

As far as I can tell, this works as long as I don't start up a second
xsession on another vt. Since I was using multiple sessions to test
my xorg.conf, this caught me off-guard... Only discovered my error by
accident. I'm not sure what the origins of this error are, but for
now I am happy. No doubt I will discover other bugs in due time...

Thanks much everyone!

matt

> --
>
> o--------------------------{ Will Maier }--------------------------o
> | jabber:..wcmaier@jabber.ccc.de | email:..........wcmaier@ml1.net |
> | \.........wcmaier@cae.wisc.edu | \..........wcmaier@cae.wisc.edu |
> *---[ Debian: The Universal Operating System (www.debian.org) ]----*
>
>
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