[plug] xorg on a laptop (radeon) - how do I preset the external monitor resolution

[William Kenworthy]

Does anyone know what I need in xorg.conf (dell i8200 laptop, radeon M9)
to allow both the LCD and external monitor to startup in 1600x1200
resolution, even when no external monitor is plugged in?

No matter what I do, the external defaults to a viewport of 640x480 (or
close to that) into 1600x1200 if no external monitor is plugged in when
starting xorg, and I have not been able to overide it (the LCD is fine.)  
It is apparently a safety feature so if a monitor that may be damaged by
the sync settings is plugged in it defaults to the lowest common
denominator, but the problem is it doesn't allow you to redetect/reset
the external port once you do plug one in.  I know what monitor and
projectors I am going to use, so this is redundant (or rather, I dont
care - they have protection when overdriven - tested!)

xorg.conf can be found at: http://wdk.dyndns.org/xorg.conf.html

Some of the comments at the top of the file are out of date: it is now
running as AGP 4, but GLX has gone back to MESA for some reason.  I have
been working on this for over a month and have tried a lot of things.  I
think xorg 6.7.0 worked, but it failed with 6.8.0 (XFree86 was fine) and
this new config is quite different from the old version.  I also had
problems with closing the lid while on an external monitor - the
external blanked when the LCD did, at least this doesnt happen with the
current config. Havent tried xinerama, but this has never been necessary
in the past.  Some of the radeon driver options for the second screen
cause stray lockups on resume (they had no effect on the problem in any
case).  xorg 6.8.0 is not as good as XFree86, at least for this machine!

The difficulty is that if I start X, and have lots of windows open, I
have to shut them all down, stop X, plug in the monitor and restart X,
then reopen all my apps.  Not good, especially when arriving to give
lecture and (publicly) having to waste time making xorg get its act
together if I forget to prepare it ahead of time.  XFree86 didnt have 
this problem, so I am sure there is some work around that I have not 
discovered yet.  Can anyone suggest what I need to do?

BillK


-- 
William Kenworthy <billk at iinet.net.au>
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