[Wolves] Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100

Sat Apr 18 09:14:53 UTC 2009

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Claire wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> I recently bought a cheap but decent 2nd hand laptop for my better half. 
> He is accustomed to using linux as long as he doesn't have to get techy 
> and can run his Football Manager 2005 game, browse the net etc.
> 
> It arrived a couple of days ago. In goes the Mandriva One Gnome cd but 
> instead of a gnome desktop I was greeted by a horrible fading blotchy 
> white screen.
> 
> After a bit (hours and hours) of research I found it is a standard 
> problem for these laptops (Toshiba Satellite Pro) and is due to the LCD 
> native resolution being very high at 1600x1200 but incorrectly reported. 
> It causes Xorg to select CRT-0, the external monitor as default which is 
> why the screen goes funny.
> 
> After another brief spell on google and the odd trial (24 hours and much 
> cursing) I managed to get it going properly, albeit with Fedora which 
> was just the one I tried next and stayed with, so thought I would pass 
> on how to do it. Apparently windows users would require a special 
> Toshiba driver disk to get anywhere further than a 800x600 display on a 
> 969x768 screen which is what I was stuck with.
> 
> It uses an nVidia GeForce4 420 Go card which uses the nvidia 96 driver. 
> with a bit of tinkering you can get a good 1024x768 resolution.
> 
> The problem stems from the LCD's EDID. The bit inside the screen which 
> tells the card what it is capable of supporting. The EDID falsely, for 
> some reason, reports the resolution as 989x768 instead of 1600x1200.
> 
> Firstly you need to install the nvidia 96 series driver for your kernel. 
> This also installs the nvidia display manager utility. To do this you 
> will need to press CTRL-ALT-F2 when you get the white screen to drop 
> into text mode tty2. You can then log in as root, or user if you use 
> sudo, and use your favourite text editor such as nano or vi to edit 
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf. In the Device section add a line to force xorg to 
> use the LCD as ..
> 
> Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-0"
> 
> DFP is Default Flat Panel. You will need to be root or sudo to edit this 
> file.
> 
> This should allow you to boot to some kind of desktop, probably 800x600, 
> maybe scrolling around inside a larger screen size.
> 
> Again as root, you need to run nvidia-settings from a terminal. The 
> nvidia configuration utility should open on the desktop. It might help 
> to hide or autohide your panels to increase screen space. You firstly 
> need to save the configuration, there is a button on the screen where 
> you set resolution and colour depth but I found it is right at the 
> bottom and was hidden by the panels. You are also looking for the Aquire 
> EDID button which should be on the screen tab for DFP-0 if memory 
> serves. Pressing this will allow you to save the edid.bin file, probably 
>   best placed in the /etc/X11 directory.
> 
> What you need to do next is hex edit this file and tell xorg to use the 
> custom edid file instead of the one built in to the LCD. ghex a hex 
> editor available in most gnome distro's, hexedit is a cli one, not sure 
> about KDE sorry.
> 
> Using your hex editor top open edid.bin you will see the 4th line looks 
> something like this..
> 
> 01 01 01 64 19 C9 77 31 00 26 30 4F 88 36 00 42 FF
> 
> The bits we are interested in are the C9 and the 31, starred below, 
> which are actually bytes 56 and 58 decimal.
> 
> 01 01 01 64 19 *C9* 77 *31* 00 26 30 4F 88 36 00 42 FF
> 
> You need to alter these to 00 and 41..
> 
> 01 01 01 64 19 *00* 77 *41* 00 26 30 4F 88 36 00 42 FF
> 
> This equates to hex value 400 (The 1 isnt relevant) which in decimal is 
> 1024. If your model supports it you can alter it accordingly.
> 
> Save the altered file (you were doing this as root weren't you?). Now 
> you need to tell xorg to use the altered edid instead of the one in the 
> monitor.
> 
> You need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf again, which should now show signs 
> the nvidia configuration utility has been there.
> 
> In the Screen section add the line..
> 
> Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/etc/X11/edid.bin"
> 
> Depending on where you chose to save the edid file.
> 
> Save the xorg.conf and restart the computer. The card should now be able 
> to select a valid screen resolution and you should be rid of the 800x600 
> screen and black bars!
> 
> I hope this will help somebody, sorry if it isn't very well written. 
> I'll be putting it on a website somewhere when I get around to it.
> 
> Claire
> 

Hi Claire,
Put it up on the wolveslug website under the "Problems Solved" section.
http://www.wolveslug.org.uk/node/41.  Apply for a login first.

- --
Ron Wellsted
ron at wellsted.org.uk http://www.wellsted.org.uk
N 52.567623, W 2.136111 Linux Counter No. 202120
Ekiga: 645022
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