Michael Hannon said...
|
|Greetings.  We just installed Scientific Linux 5.0 on a Dell Optiplex

We're still running 3 and 4 on everything, but maybe we can help.

|745 belonging to one of the professors here.  On the whole, the system
|works just fine, but we've got one small, annoying glitch with the
|video, and I'm seeking advice about it.  Note that we've installed the 
|32-bit version of SL, on the theory that there would be better drivers, 

We just stared using 64 bit on a coupl eof desktops, and so
far haven't seen any problems with 64 bit drivers.  We've been
running it on compute servers for a while with no problems,
but obviously graphics drivers don't come into play there.
All the other drivers have been rock solid, though.

|etc., for this version (and this is the prof's desktop system, not a 
|number cruncher).
|
|The monitor for this system is a Dell 2407WFP, with a preferred
|resolution of [log in to unmask]  We're using the DVI interface to the
|monitor.

We have about 10 of these.  Most of them are on nVidia cards,
but a couple are still on ATI cards.

|The graphics adapter is identified as follows by "lspci":
|
|01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 71a3
|         Subsystem: Dell Unknown device 0d03
|         Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
|         Memory at dfdf0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
|         Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
|         Capabilities: [58] Express Endpoint IRQ 0

I'm guessing this is one of the reasons you went to the proprietary
drivers?

Knowing the chipset and device, you can try setting that in the OSS
driver and see if that works-- if you can otherwise use that driver.
We switched to the proprietary drivers for 3D, better multi-head,
etc.

|We've downloaded what appears to be latest version of the ATI driver
|(ati-driver-installer-8.37.6-x86.x86_64.run) and have used the included
|aticonfig utility to help configure X-windows.  Note that the ATI web 
|site has two choices for linux:
|
|     Linux x86
|     Linux x86_64
|
|So far as I can tell, both choices lead to the same installer file, 
|marked as "...x86_64...".
|
|By the way, the ATI software identifies the graphics adapter as:
|
|     Radeon X1300/X1550 Series

We have also, on occasion, had to try several versions of the
driver to find the best one.  It's *usually* the newest, but
not always.

|The difficulty is that X-windows insists on running the display at a 
|resolution of:
|
|     1600x1200
|
|This makes for a perfectly clear display, IMHO, but it does give
|characters and images the wrong aspect ratio: everything looks a little 
|too short and a little too wide.

First off, have you tried setting up the monitor section of
xorg.conf both with and without the horizontal and vertical specs?
Sometimes it works better to supply them, and sometimes it works
better to let X probe the monitor.

We found that on some combinations of cards and Dell 2007WFPs
we need to explicitly set the mode lines.  Just type in
'X11 "mode line" generator" in your favorite search engine,
fill in the blanks, and cut and paste the results.  The one time
we needed to do this with a 2407WFP it didn't work, but the card
was pretty ancient.

An example 2007WFP setup looks like this:

Section "Modes"
	# Optimal Dell 2007WFP Mode 1680x1050@60Hz
	Identifier	"16:10"
	ModeLine	"1680x1050" 146.2 1680 1784 1960 2240 1050 1053 1059 1089 #60Hz
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig Monitor 1"
	VendorName   "Dell"
	ModelName    "dell 2000WFP"
	UseModes     "16:10"
	Option      "dpms"
EndSection

|We opened a help ticket with ATI support and received the following
|non-response:
|
| >The Linux drivers available from ATI are provide are "as is".
| >You may be able to get further assistance from the Linux community...
|
|(All your video are belong to us.)

And yet only a few weeks ago I read an interview with someone
at AMD assuring us of their support of the Linux drivers. 8^/

You might try to dig his name out of /. and see if he has an email
address, and let him know how much you appreciate their support.
(I believe it was a he, but I won't swear to that.)

The flip side of this is that good quality graphics adapters aren't
that expensive.  You can get an nVidia 7600GS for under $100 IIRC,
and the 7600GT for less than $200.  They have plenty of power, and
the drivers Just Plain Work, IME.

-Miles
-- 
Miles O'Neal
IT Manager
Intrinsity, Inc.
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