Jump to content
21 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

I've been having a problem trying to get my display to work correctly. I'm using a BenQ LCD FP567s Monitor, when I boot into MAC OSx86 the resolution of my monitor (According to the diagnostic on screen display) reads 1280x1024@60hz. In the Hardware Panel in MAC OSX, the resolution reads 1024x768. This seems to be causing my display to go crazy, it's almost as if it's trying to display in widescreen with a flicker. I've tried changing any and all settings within my montior but nothing seems to be working the way i want it to. In the hardware panel, I can not change the screen resolution at all, the only one displaying is 1024x768, and there is no refresh rate to change. Any help would be great, I don't know if i have to somehow install some drivers for my monitor or what, but I'm kinda going in circles with this. Thanks in advance.

 

Blair78

In future, please do a search to make sure this question hasnt been answered 40 times already please.

 

In order to make your monitor display the correct resolution wait till you get to the darwin boot loader, and enter this at the prompt

 

For VESA 2:

 

"Graphics Mode"="1280x1024x32"

 

For VESA 3

 

"Graphics Mode"="1280x1024x32@60"

 

 

 

So you dont have to enter this every time you start the computer, edit the boot.plist file. instructions are here:

 

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Tips_And_Tricks

 

it's under "Messing with Boot options"

Hi, I've been searching through the forum's and haven't found an answer yet. I've tried the combination you gave me, and many others too. I did a typo however in my original post, the monitor was displaying at 1280x960@60hz, NOT 1280x1024. This is what i've tried, all of which have the exact same outcome.

 

"Graphics Mode"="1024x768x32"

"1280x960x32"

"1280x1024x32"

"1024x768x32@60"

"1280x960x32@60"

"1280x1024x32@60"

 

The only time I had something different happen, is when I tried this:

 

"Graphics Mode"="800x600x32"

 

This outcome gave me an error message on my monitor which said it was "Out Of Range". and did not display anything.

 

after I press the F8 button and load the boot menu, this is what I see:

 

Darwin/x86 boot v5.0.128

1023 MB memory

VESA v2.0 64 MB (ATI RADEON VE)

 

then it shows the only partition which is the OSX partition on the drive, then:

 

boot:

 

 

Anyone that can help me out or perhaps steer me into the right direction, I would be greatful. Thanks.

 

Blair.

Sounds like your display may not support the resolution you want to use. At the noot prompt try typing ?video and a list of supported screen resolutions will be displayed. Note that you may not like what is displayed, but those are the only resolutions you can use... Sorry...

I've been searching through these forums for hours now, seems like most people are just complaining about being stuck in 1024x768, however I can't even have that working properlly. My screen looks like my monitor doesn't support the resolution of the OS, it's all stretched and hard to make anything out. (Remember back in the old windows days when you'd change the resolution to something really high and when you accepted the changes your screen would be hard to make out, full of lines and flickering) well that's what I have after installing. I can however make out in the Mac Hardware panel that it states my resolution is 1024x768.. but like I was saying before, when I go into the On Screen Display of my LCD Monitor and I look at the Display Information, it reads a resolution of 1280x960@60hz. which is obviously not what the OS is set at. I tried to manually change the resolution of the OS in the boot options to what the monitor thinks it is. (1280x960) but it still looks the same. I do not have a widescreen LCD either, it's just a standard 4:3 aspect.

 

I tried ?video, and tried changing the graphics mode to several of the supported resolutions.. but my monitor is still stuck at the same "1280x960" resolution, therefor I keep getting the exact same outcome. I don't understand what's going on.. Everything was fine when I was installing the OS.

  • 4 weeks later...

It's almost as if OSx86 is sending a signal to my monitor telling my monitor to display in a widescreen format (1280x960@60Hz). I'm pretty sure that resolution is widescreen anyway. That's what it looks like when the OS is running. But like i said before, when I view the specs in the hardware profiles, it does say 1024x768. I'm very confused. At this point I'm willing to try anything if anyone at all has any suggestions.

I found something on the apple.com website that said the videio requirements for mac x86 I have to make sure that the Core Image and Quartz Extreme are both supported. Right now I've booted to osx86 (Still with my problems) I've opened the System Profiler and discovered that in the Graphics/Displays option this:

 

Display:

 

Type: VGA-Compatible Controller

Bus: PCI

Vendor: ATI (0x1002)

Device ID: 0x5159

Revision ID: 0x0000

Kernel Extension Info: No Kext Loaded

Displays:

Display:

Resolution: 1024 x 768

Depth: 32-bit Color

Core Image: Not Supported

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Not Supported

 

..

 

So does anyone know what this means? Is there a way to work around this?

VESA support in 10.4.3 is poor. You really do need to have support for your graphics chipset to see anything other than crud on LCD monitors. Apple simply didn't make this developer release that flexible. Nor is there any incentive for them to improve upon that in the future.

 

Some things will always stay a hack. However, since a lot of open source Linux display drivers exist, in time it's possible someone will figure how to patch in the right .kext to make other graphics chipsets and monitors work better in 10.4.3 and maybe beyond.

Ok, i understand what you mean by that. But during the installation of Mac OSx86 the screen resolution was fine. I had no problems what so ever during the installation of the OS, it only started happening after the first reboot (after everything was installed). So i'm sure that there must be some way to revert whatever changes were made after the install. Does anyone have any idea what the display is set to during install ?

Post install for my Mac Mini (talking about a non hacked, PPC OS X here) left it in 1024x768x32. I used the displays control on System Preferences, and was able to choose 1280x1024x16 (well, the latter being "Thousands" of colors) and 60 Hz refresh. Originally the refresh was 75hz.

 

If you can see what you're doing at all, Choose "About this mac" from the Apple menu, then the bottom button for system details. In the list find the software section, click extensions, and find what display extension it's using.

 

If it's a VGA extension, then the real support for your chipset didn't take hold. If you can look at the /System/Library/Extensions on your system, see if you can find what probably is better for your display.

 

Then you either open a terminal session, "sudo -s" and perform a kextload -t [whatever extension.kext] - it should indicate why it won't load.

 

Sometimes if you just get a copy of the kext from a Darwin 8.01 release, making sure you change ownership and repair permissions, rebooting may set you right.

I went to the extensions window, There's about 50-60 items listeded, I'm not too sure exactly which one displays my display extension. the closest thing I could find is probably this:

 

IOGraphicsFamily:

 

Version: 1.4

Last Modified: 5/26/05 9:55 PM

Get Info String: 1.4, Copyright Apple Computer, Inc. 2000-2004

Location: /System/Library/Extensions/IOGraphicsFamily.kext

kext Version: 1.4

Load Address: 0xd7797000

Valid: Yes

Authentic: Yes

Dependencies: Satisfied

Integrity: Correct

 

I can view the /System/Library/Extensions folder, but that lists 198 items. How would I know which is the right one for my LCD Monitor? The only one I could really find pertaining to monitor support was AppleSMUMonitor.kext and this was the outcome of that:

 

root# kextload -t AppleSMUMonitor.kext

kernel extension AppleSMUMonitor.kext has problems:

Validation failures

{

"Executable file doesn't contain kernel extension code" = true

}

I'm on XP right now, so OS X isn't handy (torrents... waiting on torrents...) But the IOGraphicsFamily is a very generic driver, so it's probably too dumb to understand what resolutions your LCD can do and what it can't, so is picking sub-optimal choices.

 

I think full-featured extensions for displays have "ATI" or "Nvidia" or "GeForce" in their name - something similar to whomever makes the graphics chipset your system has. Mine's an Intel GMA 900, there's some IntelDisplay extension loaded for it.

 

AppleSMUMonitor.kext apparently is a data or control extension, nothing pertinent to your problem. Generally the extension needed will have "Display" in its name, not monitor.

I tired all of the kext files that I could find that would have to do with the display properties and still nothing. However. I was messing around in windows xp with my dual display ATI Raedon card. The current settings were set to output to my monitor and TV (S-Video Out) at the same time. I turned off the S-Video output and now everything works. I can't explain what or how this works. my OSX is on a separate drive from my WinXP drive. So the video card itself must keep these settings stored. But that's all I did. And it works, weird 'eh ?

  • 2 years later...

I know I'm replying to a 2-year-old post, but I've been going crazy about fixing my screen's resolution to no avail... Have there been any new solutions in the past two years? I've looked through the forums and I can't seem to find anything... I'm running 10.4.8 on a HP Pavilion dv1000 with a native resolution of 1280x960, but I only get 1024x768. I have tried following the instructions here, and I still can't fix it.

Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks.

×
×
  • Create New...