New Monitor Bliss

[brooksmoses]

Well, not quite. I did get a new monitor for work, and it's pleasantly larger (which I like, because I really like being about three or four feet from the screen), but the resolutions are being annoying. 1024x768 is too big, 1280x1024 is too small, and while the video card purports to support 1152x864 (which is, in my experience, Just Right for a 20"-range monitor), it seems to go green (and sometimes yellow), rather than getting the colors right. Sigh.

- Brooks

Comments

Obviously you need a bigger monitor

[akosut.livejournal.com]

I find 1280x960 pretty comfortable on 21" display. 1280x1024 is an abomination anyway, at least for a CRT display with a standard aspect ratio. The pixels are not square!

Have you tried making sure the cables are securely tightened? When I've seen monitors turn strange colors, it's usually due to a loose connection (or a broken monitor, but that sounds like not the case here). You might also try different (lower) refresh rates—it could be some strange interference issue.

Re: Obviously you need a bigger monitor

[brooksmoses]

I checked all that, and even tested a new monitor; no dice.

As for refresh rates ... that let me into doing a Google search on how to play with my XF86Config file, which led me to discover that XFree86 is delightfully flexible with regards to screen resolutions, and has a nice little utility called xvidtune to play with hsync and vsync timings. Turns out that if I tweaked things a bit on the timings (which increased the refresh rate up to just a hair below the monitor's max allowable), suddenly my 1152x864 resolution snapped into appropriate color. Yay!

And then I went through and added a 1280x960 resolution, and tweaked that to be happy, and hey presto, I've got several options for resolutions I can live with. Turns out that, while 1280x1024 is too small, 1280x960 is reasonable; I suspect it's the off-squareness that does it.

Actually, I think I'll try a 1224x916 resolution; that should be just about right.

- Brooks