Free Schwag With Incredibles DVD
From the Washington Post:
With the swirl of marketing surrounding the DVD
arrival of Pixar's "The Incredibles," not buying it almost
seems like a heroic act. Target is giving away free
sparkling water with purchase; Circuit City tosses a
kid-size "Incredibles" basketball to anyone who snags the
coveted release; and some supermarkets are even offering
gratis groceries. What's next? Complimentary awesome
superpowers for the first 50 customers?
Umm, yeth pleathe. (say it out loud fast, it's funny.)
So yeah, everyone who went to the store got theirs yesterday AND got fun
stuff.
Well, at least Walmart.com refunded my shipping.
12:24 pm | permalink |
/technology/film |
0 writebacks |
"My Preciousssss" or "Making the Dell 2005FPW work under Linux"
Click the image to see just
how big it is.
I've
gotten the Dell 20.1" Widescreen Flatpanel home and holy god is it gorgeous. I
basically scored myself an
Apple cinema
display in black for 1/3 the price.
There were some headaches along the way and I figure that I'll log my work here for
any googlers looking to get it running on Linux. For the rest of you, dear
readers, I'll resume my normal ranting tomorrow (when the Incredibles finally gets
here. What's the point of a preordering when it doesn't get there till the day after
the release?)
Well, I'm staring at 1680x1050 pixels of linuxy goodness, so I can assure you that
the 2005FPW does indeed work. The caveat is that since it uses a new (read
non-standard) resolution, most videocards don't have the "modeline" settings for the
native resolution built into their linux drivers yet. I have read about problems with
the
Intel i810 and other i8xx chipsets, and personally had a problem with the Via CLE266.
Although you can set the modeline in xorg.conf, it's worth noting that no amount of
settings I could throw at the via chipset (which is the integrated videocard on my
mini-itx board) would make it work. Some chipsets simply cannot handle this
resolution or will not accept non-standard modeline without some crazy tweaking.
In the end, I simply threw a spare ATI rage 128 in a PCI slot, added the custom
modelines, and voila, lots and lots
of pixels. It seems that the ATI driver is quite tolerant of custom modeline
settings. Read on for the xorg.conf lines you need to add to get this working.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "DELL 2005FPW"
DisplaySize 430 270
HorizSync 30.0 - 83.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 75.0
Option "dpms"
UseModes "16:10"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
Modes "1680x1050" "1400x1050"
#1400x1050 is here just as a fallback
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Modes"
# Here we define 16:10 modes
Identifier "16:10"
# 1680x1050 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 65.22 kHz; pclk: 147.14 MHz
Modeline "1680x1050" 147.14 1680 1784 1968 2256 1050 1051 1054 1087
EndSection
Finally, if you're one of the unlucky few to get monitors with dead pixels or
backlight "bleeding", don't despair. These anomalies are a normal part of the
manufacturing process and Dell is quickly replacing defective monitors. Just call them
if you have an issue, and be sure to keep your shipping packaging, as some people have
reported pixels dying during or after the first few days of use.
If you've got a display with strange color problems and "blotches" and are ready to
send the monitor back, try gently taking a paper towel and dragging the LCD "gel" that
makes up the screen into the thin spots. You may find that you can salvage the monitor
yourself and save the hassle!
1:45 am | permalink |
/technology/gadgets |
0 writebacks |
