My monitor stopped communicating its native resolution to the OS

English Hardware
#1

Monitor: Envision H193Wk, 19", 1440x900 native resolution
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 210, 1GB RAM
OS: openSUSE 13.1 (x86_64), fully updated

I bought this Envision monitor at a second-hand store. The other day, I noticed that it reverted to 1280x1024, not just in openSUSE, but in all the various OSs I have installed (Windows, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, etc.) My assumption is that the monitor felt it was overworked and underpaid, and decided to stop communicating the fact that its native resolution is 1440x900 to the video card. In other words, it seems to need replacing, which is not exactly a shock, since it was purchased used. (Nice monitor, though.)

I found that I could use the “nvidia-settings” GUI applet to force the monitor to 1440x900, which worked in openSUSE, except that the fonts ended up looking atrocious (i.e. very fuzzy; quite the opposite of crisp, no matter the anti-aliasing setting). So I uninstalled all of the nvidia components and went back to using the nouveau driver, which works pretty well, albeit a bit more slowly. And the fonts look good and crisp again.

Does anyone have an idea of what happened to my monitor?

(A word for those who are still using GeForce 6xxx-series and GeForce 7xxx-series NVIDIA video cards: From personal experience, the nouveau driver won’t work well with your card. Install the proprietary driver. And for those still using a GeForce 5xxx-series card, be advised that NVIDIA has discontinued updating that driver (the 173.x driver) for newer kernels and versions of X.org. The 173.x driver won’t install on distros coming out with kernel 3.13.)

#2

Does anyone have an idea of what happened to my monitor?

Only that EDID is not working as it is supposed to. (For example, this can happen if a VGA cable breaks a pin, or the cable is not sufficiently-wired.)

#3

I’ll get another VGA cable - this monitor only has analog input - and see if there’s any difference. (Although the one that’s attached to it hasn’t had anything happen to it; no pins are bent on the cable or the vidcard.)

#4

Yeah, that was just one example of a possible cause. However, in this case it’s likely that the ‘problem’ comes from within the monitor. Have you checked the menu for any unusual settings? (FWIW, I have read of other occasional reports where an old monitor suddenly starts mis-reporting its display resolution capabilities.)

#5

On 2014-05-09 03:26 (GMT) eco2geek composed:

> Monitor: Envision H193Wk, 19", 1440x900 native resolution
> I bought this Envision monitor at a second-hand store. The other day, I
> noticed that it reverted to 1280x1024
…
> Does anyone have an idea of what happened to my monitor?

Sounds like a 19" Polaroid TV I have, except I got mine broken but free, and fixed it
by replacing bad caps. Could be your Envision and my Polaroid came out of the same
manufacturing plant. :-p Even though specs[1] claim it is native 1440x900, xrandr of
every version tried, which is many, inexplicably for a widescreen display reports
1280x1024 as native. Its specs actually list supported modes as high as 1792x1344,
same as its EDID[2], rather unusual I think for so small a display.

Xorg still offers the option to configure a display via xorg.conf, optionally in
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/, besides the xrandr options and for some DEs settings options.
If you’re not familiar with configuring an xorg.conf file manually or with SaX3, you
can use http://fm.no-ip.com/Share/xorg.conf-minimal-EDID-workaround as a template
almost as is. The only change you need to make is to uncomment the PreferredMode line
with 1440x900 on it. All commented lines can be deleted, and if you want you can
split it into separate files in xorg.conf.d/ to replace the templates openSUSE
installation put there.

[1] http://www.cnet.com/products/polaroid-flm-1911/specs/
http://dl.owneriq.net/8/87af82bd-93e6-4466-8b43-fd18c8529010.pdf

[2] parsing EDID from /sys/class/drm/card0-VGA-1/edid
Name: FLM-1911
EISA ID: PTS00c3
EDID version: 1.3
EDID extension blocks: 0
Screen size: 41.0 cm x 26.0 cm (19.11 inches, aspect ratio 16/10 = 1.58)
Gamma: 2.4
Analog signal
Standard resolution: 640x480 @ 60 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 640x480 @ 72 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 640x480 @ 75 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 720x400 @ 70 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 800x600 @ 56 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 800x600 @ 60 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 800x600 @ 72 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 800x600 @ 75 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 1024x768 @ 60 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 1024x768 @ 70 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 1024x768 @ 75 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 1280x1024 @ 75 Hz (established timing)
Standard resolution: 1280x960 @ 60 Hz, ratio 4/3 (!)
Standard resolution: 1440x900 @ 60 Hz, ratio 16/10
Standard resolution: 1440x900 @ 75 Hz, ratio 16/10
Standard resolution: 1600x1200 @ 60 Hz, ratio 4/3 (!)
Standard resolution: 1600x1200 @ 65 Hz, ratio 4/3 (!)
Standard resolution: 1600x1200 @ 70 Hz, ratio 4/3 (!)
Standard resolution: 1600x1200 @ 75 Hz, ratio 4/3 (!)
Standard resolution: 1792x1344 @ 60 Hz, ratio 4/3 (!)
Max video bandwidth: 210 MHz

HorizSync 30-100
VertRefresh 60-75

Monitor preferred modeline (59.9 Hz vsync, 64.0 kHz hsync, ratio 5/4, 79x100 dpi)

(bad ratio)
ModeLine “1280x1024” 108 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1068 +hsync +vsync

“The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive.” Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

#6

With this monitor, it was literally doing its thing correctly one day, and then not doing it correctly the next, as if the chip inside the monitor that reports EDID data just up and died. The resolution suddenly displayed incorrectly in every Linux and Windows OS I had installed.

Then again, I only paid a small amount for it at Goodwill. Since Envision is a good brand (I have a 1280x1024 Envision monitor that’s 10 years old that still works fine), I was hoping it would last a while, but I have no reason to complain. I’ll go back for another monitor soon.

Anyway, I’m pretty familiar with xorg.conf. (And XF86Config before it.) I’ve used “nvidia-xconfig” (a CLI utility) to generate it automatically for a while now. It works well.

The one thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve also had to manually set the horizontal and vertical sync rates correctly (which makes sense, since the EDID data is missing).

#7

Just a note, not sure whether it helps:
I had a similar problem two years ago, when my monitor suddenly sent invalid EDID data. (In my case the data itself was ok actually but the checksum was wrong, so the kernel/Xorg ignored it completely)

In my case completely disconnecting the power from the monitor fixed it again. (just turning it off did not help)

As a sidenote:
Before I did that (disconnecting the power) and noticed the EDID was ok again afterwards, I patched the kernel to ignore the invalid checksum, and used that as a workaround for weeks or even months… :wink:

#8

Hi,

I dropped just to help documenting this, since this is an uncommon and very annoying situation.

I have an HP w1907v panel that always worked at 1440x900. The graphics card is an NVIDIA Geforce 210. Currently I’m running Ubuntu 14.04 with KDE using the NOUVEAU driver but previously ran other Linux version using the NVIDIA driver also at 1440x900.

In the last days the login manager started to come up at 1024x768 and only reboot would bring it back to 1440x900. Today 1440x900 didn’t come back, so I was forced to investigate in a hurry.

After some hours of painful debugging I ended up concluding that the monitor wasn’t sending the right EDID information anymore,

159.150] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Output DVI-I-1 has no monitor section
159.152] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Output HDMI-1 has no monitor section
159.171] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Output VGA-1 has no monitor section
159.193] (II) NOUVEAU(0): EDID for output DVI-I-1
159.195] (II) NOUVEAU(0): EDID for output HDMI-1
159.221] (II) NOUVEAU(0): EDID for output VGA-1
159.221] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Printing probed modes for output VGA-1
159.221] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Modeline "1024x768"x60.0 65.00 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync (48.4 kHz e)
159.221] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Modeline "800x600"x60.3 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync (37.9 kHz e)
159.221] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Modeline "800x600"x56.2 36.00 800 824 896 1024 600 601 603 625 +hsync +vsync (35.2 kHz e)
159.221] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Modeline "848x480"x60.0 33.75 848 864 976 1088 480 486 494 517 +hsync +vsync (31.0 kHz e)
159.221] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Modeline "640x480"x59.9 25.18 640 656 752 800 480 489 492 525 -hsync -vsync (31.5 kHz e)

even though it would accept the correct mode.

This what I did:

First I obtained a modeline using cvt:

root@linuxpc:~# cvt 1440 900 60

1440x900 59.89 Hz (CVT 1.30MA) hsync: 55.93 kHz; pclk: 106.50 MHz

Modeline “1440x900_60.00” 106.50 1440 1528 1672 1904 900 903 909 934 -hsync +vsync
root@linuxpc:~#

Then I applied it as a regular user, after login:

xrandr --newmode “1440x900_60.00” 106.50 1440 1528 1672 1904 900 903 909 934 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode VGA-1 “1440x900_60.00”
xrandr -s “1440x900_60.00”

Since this worked well I added the three xrandr lines to a script: ~/.kde/Autostart/fix-res.sh. The fonts looked too big on some applications so I ran kde-system-settings and on Application Appearance -> Fonts I checked the “Force Fonts DPI” checkbox without changing the default DPI setting (it is 96 on this machine).

Now everything looks good again inside the KDE sessionn, thanks to this workaround - no doubt the monitor has a problem.

#9

I put the modline in a xorg.conf file. Another 1600x900 and I believe my problem is a KVM switch between the monitor and the computer.