[ltp] IBM R40(e) and R51 mirror problem with beamer screen

[Matt Graham]

On Monday 21 February 2005 20:21, after a long battle with technology, 
Uwe Brauer wrote:
> On both [Thinkpad R40e and R51] I have
> installed Debian SID (well Knoppix with dist-upgrade).
> R40(e) ATI Radeon 9000
> R51: Intel R 82852/82855

Er... what's lspci say the video chip is?  There are differences between 
the i830M, i845G, i852GM, i865G, etc. Intel chips, and the Windows 
Device Mangler lies like a rug.

> The R 40(e) allows --during the boot process-- to switch between the
> LCD and the beamer screen by pressing Fn-F7.
> The R51 behaves very differently. It is not possible in the booting
> process to mirror the LCD screen.

Different video chipsets, different capabilities.  The Intel video cards 
are widely regarded as the bottom of the barrel for various reasons.  
Displaying boot messages on 2 heads isn't *that* important, but 
dual-head can be nice once X is running.  There's a kernel module 
project somewhere that allows boot messages to be directed to multiple 
heads of some dual-head video cards... ah, the "linuxconsole" project 
on sourceforge.net.

> So in Linux, when I switch between the screen [on the R51], the LCD 
> gets blank, the screen looks in the beamer sort of distorted [...]
> Now in Windows XP, once the windows manager is up, it is possible to
> mirror the LCD with the beamer.

> So I wonder whether it is possible have a similar behaviour using
> vncviewer vncserver and the like.

Why drag VNC into this?  The man page for i810 says that the behavior 
you want is possible as long as X is running.  Just set up your X 
config file properly.  "man i810", pay special attention to the 
MonitorLayout and Clone options.  I *think* you want these 2 lines in 
the Device section of your X config file:

Option "MonitorLayout" "CRT,CRT"
Option "Clone" "true"

...try that, maybe the CloneRefresh option, restart X, see what you get.  
HTH,

-- 
   We're standing there pounding a dead parrot on the counter, and the
   management response is to frantically swap in new counters to see if
   that fixes the problem.           --Peter Gutmann, ASR 6/18/1998
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see