Patch the Video BIOS

In difference to Microsoft Windows graphics drivers, the Linux X.org server respects the supported VESA video modes as listed in the Video BIOS.

On quite some newer laptops with Intel chipsets and non-standard resolutions, the hardware vendors don't include the native resolution of the LCD display in the list of supported resolutions. IIRC, the reason is that these resolutions are no standard VESA-modes and therefore shall not be listed there.

The result is that X.org refuses to start in the native resolution on such devices. However, operation LCD displays in non-native resolutions is not recommended as the result is either "black bars" or an interpolated, blurred picture.

To work around this problem, the tool 855resolution is available which temporary changes the list of supported resolutions in the RAM copy of the video bios. This has to be done on each boot before starting the X.org server. This has also to be respected during resume from Suspend2Disk.

The current SUSE 10.1 release not only includes that package, but also an infrastructure to have it called automatically during normal boots and ResumeFromDisk.

The boot script /etc/init.d/boot.videobios does the actual work. The configuration is stored in /etc/sysconfig/videobios.

To use this feature, please follow this description:

Become root
Ensure that the boot.videobios service is activated by running chkconfig | grep boot.videobios. If it is off, enable it with insserv boot.videobios.
Run 855resolution -l to read the list of supported modes from RAM copy of video BIOS.
Identify a resolution (mode) which you won't use normally. Note the resolution number (the hexadezimal number after Mode).
Identify the native resolution of your LCD display. Should be available in the Internet, product sheets and/or your manual.
Edit /etc/sysconfig/videobios. Set VIDEOBIOS_PATCH to yes and VIDEOBIOS_PARAMETERS to the mode followed by X and Y resolution. If you e.g. identified the mode 3c and have a native resolution of 1400x1050, you could set:

VIDEOBIOS_PATCH="yes"
VIDEOBIOS_PARAMETERS="3c 1400 1050"

--Yoda gh 07:58, 14 July 2006 (UTC)