Arch Linux

MTGap

Member

Registered: 2010-11-07

Posts: 1

Resolution problems on Sony Vaio PCG-FX290K

I just got a Sony Vaio PCG-FX290K from 2001 that I installed arch linux on with lxde. The native screen resolution is 1400x1050, but I can only get it up to 1024x768. This causes more problems than just having the wrong resolution. The screen is rendered at 1024x768 at the center of the screen, with an inch and a half of black border, the mouse thinks the screen coordinates start at the top left corner of the screen, which means that the mouse clicks and the cursor are an inch and a half down and an inch and a half to the right. This makes it extremely difficult to use the computer with lxde.

The graphics in this laptop is an intel 815em with 11mb of shared memory. I'm certain that it has the 11mb, because the computer only sees 245MB of the 256MB of ram. So it should be capable of having a resolution at 1400x1050. However xorg won't let me do that. Thanks to this forum post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1193709 I was able to get it up to 1024x768 from the original 800x600. Here's what my /etc/X11/xorg.conf looks like:

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "Intel"
    Driver        "intel"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "LVDS"
    VendorName    "Sony"
    ModelName    "Sony Vaio XGA"
    Option        "DDC"    "False"
    HorizSync    28-51
    VertRefresh 43-60
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier    "Vaio Screen"
    Monitor        "LVDS"
    Device        "Intel"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Subsection "Display"
    Depth 24
    Modes "1400x1050"
    EndSubsection
EndSection

I ran xrandr as well and here's the output of that:

xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 1024 x 768, maximum 1024 x 768
default connected 1024x768+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   1024x768    60.0+
   800x600      60.0   56.0
   640x480      60.0

A few others notes: All of the live cds I tried ended up booting with a resolution of 800x600, and when Windows XP was installed the loading screen was also at 800x600, but it switched over to 1400x1050 when fully loaded. My grub menu and inital screen with arch linux is at 800x600, I would like to also fix this so that it is at 1400x1050 as well. Unfortunately I don't know the horizontal sync and vertical refresh of this laptop, and can't seem to find any documentation on it.

It's quite amazing though, that the touchpad works perfectly. Even the vertical scrolling works on it.

Thanks for any help.

Update: I tried changing my xorg.conf to have a virtual size of 1400x1050. Now the screen is at 1400x1050, but still inside of 1024x768 so the mouse just moves around within the screen and reveals more as I go to the corners.

Here's my /var/log/Xorg.0.log: http://pastebin.com/ZRGYFpMw

Last edited by MTGap (2010-11-07 23:10:36)