[ltp] external monitor Fn-F7

[Alex Deucher]

On 5/27/05, Nicolas Kreft <kreft@do.isst.fhg.de> wrote:
> Hi David!
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> David Tansey wrote:
> > Has anyone setup a thinkpad to easily switch to external monitors and
> > back (both cloning, side-by-side, and one-or-the-other)?
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> Yes, and it was a long journey with my X40.
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> Using Fn-F7 through ibm-acpi gave me about 20 pixels of garbage
> at the top of the screen.
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> Using i855crt worked, but the mouse cursor would stay fixed at
> the upper left corner on the monitor output.
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> i810switch worked, but with very poor video quality on the
> monitor output.
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> Then I found another xorg.conf and a script that somehow
> 'copies' the contents of the LCD to the external Monitor
> via vnc. Worked, but awfully slow.
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> The following xorg.conf seems to work flawlessly: X just
> clones the display on the monitor output. No need to
> connect the monitor prior to starting X, no problems with
> S3 Sleep and Software Suspend2 ...
> The only drawback is that overlays (e.g. xine) are displayed
> only on the internal LCD. Don't know how to fix this. It Would
> be nice to switch the overlay from internal to external
> display with some script...
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This is because in Clone mode each output is driven by a different
controller.  The hardware only has one overlay so it can only be
sourced to one crtc at a time.  I think the intel hardware supports
sourcing the overlay to either head so you should be able to switch
it.  Take a look at the Xv attributes; there may be one to switch the
source.  If not there may be a xorg.conf option to set it at server
start.

Alex