Dell Studio Hybrid won't work with ViewSonic vx2235wm monitor (DVI)

[Greg Rundlett]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 3:28 PM, Jarod Wilson <jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Apr 14, 2009, at 1:52 PM, Ben Eisenbraun wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 08:39:32AM -0400, Greg Rundlett wrote:
>>> I already own a ViewSonic vx2235wm 22" LCD (circa 2006) monitor
>>> (which
>>> has DVI and VGA inputs).  If I connect the Dell to the ViewSonic
>>> using a
>>> DVI cable there is no output to the monitor.  Nothing.  Because
>>> there is
>>> no signal, the monitor light is amber rather than blue.
>>
>> I bet it's not the compuer; it's the monitor.
>>
>> I have a Viewsonic vx2025wm that exhibits similar symptoms.  Works
>> fine on
>> VGA, works fine on DVI with my Macbook, but sits in power save/no
>> signal
>> mode using DVI to an Nvidia card in my desktop.
>>
>> If you google for "dead dvi viewsonic" or "dell stuck dvi" and
>> you'll turn
>> up a ton of hits.  Dell sold quite a few rebranded Viewsonics, and the
>> stuck DVI was a regular issue on their support forums.
>> Unfortunately Dell
>> took the forums down, but there are still posts out there about the
>> issue.
>>
>> I first saw the problem after plugging in a VGA cable to a second
>> machine
>> while the DVI was connected to the desktop.  On the next reboot, the
>> DVI
>> stopped working.  I can usually get it running again through some
>> combination of plugging and unplugging the DVI/VGA cables with power
>> ups/downs in the middle, but it's not reliable, and I've basically
>> resigned
>> myself to using the VGA.
>
> Oh, hrm... Now that you mention it... I have a ... hah! vx2025wm that
> does similar, and can also only be used via VGA. I have a second one
> that works fine via DVI. The first one, DVI *did* initially work, then
> I was dinking around with resolution changes or something, and it
> stopped working, hasn't ever worked since...
>

>From what I've been able to uncover, it looks like the problem I'm
having is due to volatile EDID

http://komeil.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!11E09A8750032F2C!252.entry

If I can get a good EDID (online or from ViewSonic), and reset it,
then the monitor should work.

I'm researching now how to flash the EDID using Linux.  Maybe
read-edid http://linux.about.com/cs/linux101/g/readedid.htm
http://john.fremlin.de/programs/linux/read-edid/

Info from the Ubuntu package:

hardware information-gathering tool for VESA PnP monitors
read-edid consists of two tools:
 .
 get-edid uses a VESA VBE 2 interrupt service routine request to read a
128 byte EDID version 1 structure from your graphics card, which retrieves
this information from the monitor via the Data Display Channel (DDC).

parse-edid parses this data structure and outputs data suitable for
inclusion into the XFree86 or X.org configuration file.

get-edid uses architecture-specific methods for querying the video hardware
(real-mode x86 instructions on i386, Open Firmware device tree parsing on
PowerMac) and is therefore only available for i386 and powerpc architectures.

-- 
Greg Rundlett
Web Developer - Initiative in Innovative Computing
http://iic.harvard.edu
camb 617-384-5872
nbpt 978-225-8302
m. 978-764-4424
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