Using dual widescreen monitors on old hardware with Ubuntu
Posted by Admin • Tuesday, February 21. 2012 • Category: Linux
My primary development machine is probably 10 years old - it's a Thinkpad T42 in a docking station (Dock II). This is fine - it's fast enough for most purposes, it runs dual monitors, and it uses very little power so I can leave it on at all times.
Not so fine once I got a 24" monitor to go with the standard 20".
First, the DVI hardware in the docking station can't handle high resolutions - it worked fine at 1280x1024, but not so great at 1920x1080. That's OK, I can drive the widescreen with VGA, I can't tell the difference. But now everything on the screen repaints very, very slowly - I mean really slowly - 1/2 a frame per second. This is bad. OK so the video chip in the laptop wasn't intended to drive a combined 3200 x 1080 resolution - but what can I do about it?
Not so fine once I got a 24" monitor to go with the standard 20".
First, the DVI hardware in the docking station can't handle high resolutions - it worked fine at 1280x1024, but not so great at 1920x1080. That's OK, I can drive the widescreen with VGA, I can't tell the difference. But now everything on the screen repaints very, very slowly - I mean really slowly - 1/2 a frame per second. This is bad. OK so the video chip in the laptop wasn't intended to drive a combined 3200 x 1080 resolution - but what can I do about it?
Continue reading "Using dual widescreen monitors on old hardware with Ubuntu"
