Wayne Chirnside wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

WC> You've got me. Caught me by surprise when Win 98 just tried to ID
WC> my monitor, but could not.

RJT> I never could figure that out...

WC> Me neither, understandable for Linux as you configure your own
WC> drivers resolutions but Windows?

WC> I mean I'm running an old Packard Bell monitor at very close to the
WC> maximum resolution and all is well.

RJT> Always thought that those video connectors on the card to the monitor
RJT> were all *outputs*.

WC>  Same here, appears that may be different with the newer monitors. 
WC> I guess newer monitors are plug and play with Windows sensing what
WC> it can handle.

I dunno,  beats me.  The one I use at work has just a few buttons on the
front,  and all of the "adjustments" are done that way.  Looks
like there's a bit more computer horsepower in it than some early computer
systems had!

WC> I can mess up the sync by trying to set resolution too high but in
WC> point of fact like Charles A. was speaking of I'm thinking of
WC> reseting my resolution _downwards_ for readability.

RJT> The w98 box here is stuck at 640x480,  as that's all that particular
RJT> monitor can handle.

WC> The monitor on the NEC box is like that, old Goldstar and it won't
WC> _quite_ sync up on Windows 98.

At all?  That's weird.

RJT> The linux box is at 800x600,  the monitor will supposedly do 
RJT> 1024x768,

WC> The latter figure is what I'm running 98 at and it'll go one higher
WC> before the sync slips.

Oh.  Sounds like it's a bit more capable then the one I have on the 98 box
here.  The one I have on the linux box is also,  as it happens,  an older
P-B monitor.  I picked it up at a yard sale for $5...

RJT> but I have some bugs to get out of the modelines in the config 
RJT> file before that's working right.  I also have an IBM monitor here 
RJT> that'll only do 640x480 and 1024x768,  but _not_ 800x600 for some 
RJT> strange reason -- was told that before I got it.  I had that 
RJT> hooked up to the OS/2 box and at the higher resolution things got 
RJT> very small.

WC> That is a problem for me.

Wouldn't be a problem on a bigger monitor,  I guess.

RJT> I can see higher resolutions if you have a bigger monitor.  The trouble
RJT> with that is that bigger monitors are also way deeper,  and I have too
RJT> much stuff on this desk as it is,  I'd lose a lot of space.

WC> Landlady sprung for a 21 inch flat screen and loves it.

I don't think I've ever seen a flat screen that size.  I really should go
out shopping one of these days,  just to get a handle on what's out there.

WC> She has two other monitors lying about and I must ask her about 
WC> buying one before they go south as in addition to caps deforming 
WC> she lives on the water. She already offered them to me but she'd 
WC> just arranged for the H.P. I'm using so I turned them down.

There ya go...

RJT> The one at work is bigger than anything I have here and the 
RJT> default with that is I think 1024x768,  I kicked it up to whatever 
RJT> the next step is beyond that.  It'll go higher,  but that's about 
RJT> the limit of what I can deal with.  It lets me get more on the 
RJT> screen.

WC> I'm not crowded here so I could easily go 640 x 480 but what would
WC> that do to the ladies of alt.binary.pictures.erotic.brunette ;-)

Depends on the resolution of the original image,  and on what you are using
to view them in terms of software.  Sometimes with that sort of thing color
depth can be more important than resolution.  You'll have to fiddle with
settings and see what works for you.  Once you get linux going,  you'll
also have to play a little with "the gimp",  that's one hell of a
powerful program,  and I haven't even begun to explore all of its
capabilities,  though I am at this point getting some useful work done with
it,  mostly cropping images that have absurd amounts of graphic
"border" around them featuring names of companies that no longer
exist,  bbs numbers that haven't existed for a number of years,  and
similar stuff.  Start out with a .gif file that's up around 600-700K,  and
removing this sort of junk cuts the size in half.  Convert it to .jpg and
the end result is down around 40-60k!  I guess that padding lets them look
like they're filling up a cdrom,  when in reality they're not doing
anything close.

RJT> OTOH,  on the linux box I don't want to go below 800x600 as a bunch of
RJT> stuff in X just doesn't seem to work right -- the buttons you need to
RJT> click on are off the bottom of the screen,  etc.  Yet I've already
RJT> kicked the default font size up a notch or two just to make it easier
RJT> to read.

WC> Yes those are nice options to have, large fonts, and I do recall 
WC> running Xconfig with 800 x 600 as being the bottom end of options 
WC> offered for X-Windows.

Oh,  it'll run at 640x480,  but the results ain't all that terrific.

RJT> One nice thing about the browser window that's currently on the screen
RJT> is a pair of magnifying glass icons on the toolbar,  one with a + next
RJT> to it,  and one with a -.  These will let you get real comfortable and
RJT> scale things to whatever works for you...

WC> I need to get back to the NEC which has Linux on it but I also need 
WC> to slow down for a bit. Definately will get Linux going when I 
WC> switch ISP's as I expect my authorization SMTP problem to vanish. 
WC> See post to me from paul Williams in last packet regarding an ISP 
WC> at 10 dollars a momth where he claims nationwide numbers.

Yeah,  I noticed that...

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