Among all the other stuff on the agenda for this week, I figured changing the connection from the office Windows box to the monitor might be a good idea.
See, the box in question was hooked up to the monitor with a longish VGA cable through a KVM switch. Works OK for low-res displays, but at the monitor's native format of 1680x1050, it gets kinda blurry. Which, naturally, is why the Linux box is connected using a DVI cable.
This had been OK-ish, as long as I was using Remote Desktop for most of the actual work on the Windows machine. The resulting display had a few pixels shaved off the bottom to accommodate the KDE panel, but it worked fine for word processing and such.
Well, now I'm trying to do CAD work on the Windows machine, and it's a bit wonky with Remote Desktop - indeed, one of the CAD programs doesn't work with Remote Desktop at all. Something about 3D.
So: the old All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 card does have a DVI connector on the back. Remove the DVI-to-VGA adapter, run a DVI-to-HDMI cable to the monitor's HDMI input, and away we go!
Or not.
Windows sees the monitor sometimes as a BenQ FP222WH, and sometimes as a "Plug and Play Monitor." In either case, it thinks the maximum format is 1280x1024.
Which is, to use an esoteric technical term, wrong.
And it had been working, back when it was on the analog VGA connection. It was a bit blurry, but it was running at the correct native format.
A spot of Googlage later, and I've downloaded a utility that can generate a corrected .inf file. After much futzing, I've told Windows that that's the driver for this monitor. A reboot later, and Windows consistently has the right name for the monitor.
It does not, however, have the correct resolution. It offers 1280x1024.
ATI's "Catalyst" utility lets me kick the format up a little, but nowhere near what it should be.
So, what should have been a half-hour expedition among the cables and dust wound up eating the entire morning, and it still isn't working right.
Ain't plug'n'pray wonderful?
And, y'know, I didn't have this problem with Linux. Linux just works.
Enough venting, and more than enough time spent on the stupid Windows problem. Time to get some actual work done. Then, later, I can return to the ferschlugginer Windows issue. (Probable solution: "buy a new computer to go with your new cable.")
Update: I swapped the cables.
So now the Linux box is connected to the HDMI port on the monitor, and the Windows box uses the DVI-to-DVI cable.
And, whaddaya know: Windows wakes up using the old display setting (1280x1024), but the monitor presents it in 4:3 format with a little black band at the bottom, rather than stretched to fit the screen. The display settings thingie now lets me choose 1680x1050, and all's well.
Returning to the Linux side of things: it looks happy so far, except that for some reason a background color of ArrGeeBee*(95%,95%,95%) comes out as a series of pale-blue bars on light gray, instead of uniform light gray. Huh? Changing the 95%s to 96% gives proper light gray, but one of the colors in this here Typepad composition page has the same banding effect.
Also, the Xorg configuration utility seems to have set things up for a generic plug-n-pray monitor, so if I reboot I'll presumably get stretched 1280x1024, unless I go in and manually set the display format.
Looks like the monitor has Issues on the HDMI port, which I'd always thought was just supposed to be a sort of updated and shrunken DVI.
Maybe I need to buy a DVI monitor switch. Oog: pricey, last I checked. Well, I need to make a computer-store run soon anyway, on account of yet another fan starting to get noisy, so maybe I can look at switches. And there's always Newegg.
* Bypassing Typepad's helpful translation of the expression as I'd originally typed it.
Update 2: picked up a 2-port DVI KVM+audio switch (IOgear GCS932UB). Kinda overpriced despite being a returned unit (yup, Fry's), but today, while ordering one from Amazon or B&H would get it to me next week sometime.
Anyway, the problem is solved, and the Windows box can now be connected to the speakers, should I ever feel the need to do such a thing.
One thing IOgear doesn't mention in the little installation booklet is how the gadget is powered. Turns out that applying power to any of the four USB plugs does the trick. I'm not actually using the K nor M switch functions, what with the gizmo being of the USB persuasion, and me having a PS/2 keyboard and mouse already routed by way of a 4-port KVM switch.
So now I've got a little button on my desk to switch the input to the monitor, independently of switching the keyboard, mouse, and VGA. I was having to use a button anyway, and this is easier to find than the little DVI->HDMI->VGA button on the side of the monitor.
And the display is looking fine, from either machine. I do need to rearrange the icons on the Windows desktop, though, so's they don't get auto-rearranged when switching between the 1680x1050 direct connection and the 1670x975 remote desktop.
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