[mythtv-users] Monitor issues

Wed Aug 22 22:14:17 UTC 2018

It was the nvidia-740 driver.  It was not recognizing the monitor
resolution.  I switched to the 704 driver and that problem went away.

On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 1:12 PM, John Finlay <finlay at moeraki.com> wrote:

> Some time ago when I had tiny fonts my fix was to add a line like:
>
>     Option         "DPI" "100x100"
>
> to the "Device" sections of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf
>
> With my current NVIDIA 304.135 driver that doesn't seem to be necessary.
>
> John
>
>
> On 8/22/2018 8:51 AM, Allen Edwards wrote:
>
> Thanks for the reply. I really do appreciate the help.
>
> I previously had a 6000 series card with the 304 drivers as recommended
> but not installed.  When I switched to the 8600 card the recommended driver
> was 340 and I installed them.
>
> I spent at lease an hour with Google looking for a solution to the tiny
> font problem.  The problem is that the font is not just tiny, it is
> completely unreadable so it is impossible to do anything.  I can best
> describe it as this.  If the text should be "hello World" what I would see
> is "__".  OK, not quite that small but probably font that is 3 pixels
> high.  Bottom line is I can't do anything other than use Myth, which is
> fine. Here is a screen shot and it really does look like this.
>
>
>
>
> I also see that if I go to my monitor instead of the TV, there I can read
> the characters sometimes but the monitor is being detected as a smaller
> resolution. I can't tell exactly what size as that readout is too blurry
> but I think it is 480 x something and not the 1280 or whatever the monitor
> actually is. I suspect these problems are related.
>
> Also, I appreciate the links from mtdean but I can't do anything on the TV
> as a monitor because of the small fonts.  Here is a section from xorg.conf
> that seems to lack specifics
>
> *Section "Monitor"*
> *    Identifier     "Monitor0"*
> *    VendorName     "Unknown"*
> *    ModelName      "Unknown"*
> *    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0*
> *    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0*
> *    Option         "DPMS"*
> *EndSection*
>
> *Section "Device"*
> *    Identifier     "Device0"*
> *    Driver         "nvidia"*
> *    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"*
> *EndSection*
>
> *Section "Screen"*
> *    Identifier     "Screen0"*
> *    Device         "Device0"*
> *    Monitor        "Monitor0"*
> *    DefaultDepth    24*
> *    SubSection     "Display"*
> *        Depth       24*
> *    EndSubSection*
>
>
> I guess I will switch back to the 304 driver.  Just to confirm I so this
> by doing this:
>
> *sudo apt-get purge nvidia**
> *sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers*
> *sudo apt-get update*
> *sudo apt-get install nvidia-304*
>
> Allen
>
> On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 2:42 AM, Stephen Worthington <
> stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 22 Aug 2018 01:39:38 -0700, you wrote:
>>
>> >This is not strictly a Myth issue but I need to solve this before working
>> >on getting VDPAU working.  I switched to a Geforce 8600GT in the hopes of
>> >getting VDPAU working which I failed at so far.  But what I am asking
>> here
>> >is how to get a workable system.  I have two choices now.  1) Single
>> >monitor on the TV with all the system fonts and icons so small they are
>> >unreadable. I mean so small it is completely unreadable.  The MythTV
>> fonts
>> >are fine, normal, but the Ubuntu fonts are tiny. Or I could 2) Leave the
>> TV
>> >that way and add a second monitor, which I have.  But the computer will
>> not
>> >recognize a second monitor.  I have looked at nvidia config and at the
>> >standard Display section. Neither show a second monitor.  I do this with
>> >the monitor plugged into the DVI slot that works and the TV plugged into
>> >the DVI slot that has no signal.
>>
>> I can remember having that tiny fonts problem at some time, and
>> finding a quick fix for it via a Google search.  But that was quite a
>> few years ago - probably when I was using 14.04 or maybe even earlier.
>> And I can not remember anything about the fix.
>>
>> For an 8600GT, I believe you should be installing the Nvidia 304
>> series driver.  Sometimes the recommended driver is 340 series, and
>> that will cause problems with a card that old.  So please check what
>> video drivers are installed.  What is the output of these commands:
>>
>> lshw -C video
>> apt list --installed | grep nvidia
>>
>> Also, be aware that Nvidia has stopped all support for the 304
>> drivers, so they do not work with 4.15 kernels without patching.  But
>> they should be fine in 16.04 if you do not install the HWE (Hardware
>> Enablement stack) which brings in the newer kernels.  I am using the
>> 304 drivers on my mother's MythTV box running 16.04 and they work well
>> for her builtin motherboard GPU (Nvidia C77), which is a similar age
>> to the 8600GT.
>>
>> To run with dual monitors, the easy way to test is to use the
>> nvidia-settings GUI tool.  Run it from a non-root command prompt on
>> the GUI screen.  It will allow you to select the monitor setup, if the
>> drivers have seen more than one monitor.
>> _______________________________________________
>> mythtv-users mailing list
>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>> http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>> http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
>> MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing listmythtv-users at mythtv.orghttp://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-usershttp://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
> MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20180822/1f59daa9/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: tiny.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 10492 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20180822/1f59daa9/attachment.jpg>