[bomfunk]

I need my old rig with a CRT up and running temporarily, DSL's got all I need so I'm going with it (for now at least). The problem is, I don't know how to change the refresh rate. Which is annoying because 1) it's stuck at 60Hz which strains my eyes and 2) the image appears "off screen" at that Hz for some reason (and no, simply adjusting the position is not an option, don't ask why, let's just pretend daddy said so and inobedience -> raep). I found the options to configure X and set colour depth and resolution and whatnot but no refresh rate, how would I go about doing that?

EDIT: Regarding problem 2 - there's no lube either. Don't make that or a related joke. This is serious.

 

[gonX]

You can use the HorizSync and VertRefresh parameters for the monitor in the xorg.conf file found in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Knowing DSL it's probably running an outdated version of X though.

If you like DSL, why not use Arch Linux? It's at least as lightweight and more up-to-date.

 

[Melcar]

Doesn't DSL use vesa instead of actual drivers? If that's the case it will be very hard to get most resolutions.

 

[bomfunk]

Does Arch have a decent LiveCD (I didn't think it does)? Whatever distro I go with, it has to be lightweight and has to be able to connect to the internet & do other basic stuff live.

@Melcar - yes, it uses vesa as far as I can tell. But no, resolution is not an issue, it's fine at 800x600. Though when I tried 1024x768, the colours appeared all messed up, apparently it only supports 8-bit colours at that res. But 8x6 is fine.

Anyways, does it matter if the version of X is outdated? I mean, it works, shouldn't those particular options be present anyways?

 

[Melcar]

Vesa is just a generic display driver that provides basic (very basic) mod-setting so you can at least get a working display; all chips should be supported, but the resolutions available will be limited. Try PuppyLinux. A bit bigger than DSL, but it's kept updated frequently and it lets you use either vesa modes or regular xorg drivers. Of course, I don't use it for more than disk recovery operations and on my dad's ancient laptop, but it gets the job done.

Edit: Have you tried editing xorg.conf manually? Add the desired resolutions and refresh rates and see if they stick. Something like this:

Code:

Section "Screen"
                         Identifier     "Screen0"
                         Device           "Card0"
                         Monitor          "Monitor0"
                         DefaultDepth 24
                         SubSection "Display"
                                          Viewport  0 0
                                          Depth     24
                                          Modes     "1024x768"
                          EndSubSection
EndSection

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/.../x-config.html

 

[bomfunk]

Weird, I didn't find xorg.conf...

Well anyways, if I try puppy, does it have an option to load the entire thing to RAM? That's what really made me go DSL, the ancient DVD sucker... well, sucks, and it took eons to get even basic tasks done (it took like 5 minutes just to open up firefox) when I tried Mint LiveCD... it worked alright when everything was loaded up, but :/

 

[Melcar]

Yes, you can load it into your RAM.

http://puppylinux.org/main/index.php...%20Started.htm

 

[gonX]

Arch Linux has a LiveCD, but it doesn't have X installed.

Why would you want a LiveCD though? You can just install it directly on the thumb drive - Linux automatically caches anything anyway.

 

[bomfunk]

What exactly do you mean by installing it directly on a thumb drive, and by caching?

Well, I just don't want to install anything on the machine, but I need Linux on it temporarily, so basically that's it.

 

[gonX]

Instead of installing it to the harddrive you can install it to a thumb drive (or USB stick, external storage, memory stick or whatever you prefer calling it) and have it boot from there.

Why you would want do this is because a 52x CD is 7.2 mB/s with an average seek time of around 5 ms - but imperfections in the disk may reduce it all the way down to 100ms (and far below 7.2 mB/s by the way), while a thumb drive is usually above 10 mB/s with a seek time of ideally nothing (below 0.1 ms).

 

[bomfunk]

Yea, but I have the thing loaded up in RAM anyways, so that's irrelevant, I don't even have the CD in when I'm actually using it... still, good to know, though.

 

[Traeumt]

i am using it on eeepc with its lcd so have no clue

 

[gonX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bomfunk Yea, but I have the thing loaded up in RAM anyways, so that's irrelevant, I don't even have the CD in when I'm actually using it... still, good to know, though.

It still takes a while to load to the RAM

 

[bomfunk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gonX It still takes a while to load to the RAM

It's actually surprisingly quick, only takes about 10-15 seconds, really not all that much compared to the total boot time... I guess sequential reads always were one of these things' strengths?