Changing the size of visible display

[zorglub76]

Hi all

I recently got a laptop, or at least one third of a laptop - a friend gave me his
old Pentium II. Not bad, concerning it was free. I intended to use it for music
and in-bed reading/writing.

The only problem - only one (upper) third of the display is visible. Even that
is not too bad for me. It's still enough for reading (more than any PDA).

So I'm searching for a software solution to this problem.

I believe that there is a way to change the configuration so that display is set
to something like 270x70 milimeters. I found somewhere that xorg.conf should be
changed, and I did change it:

1) I edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf
2) Removed the comments on "DisplaySize 340 270" line
3) Changed it to "DisplaySize 270 67" (which are the measures of my "screen" in milimeters)
4) Saved it and restarted the computer

But nothing happened...

I use Vector Linux and am a newbie.. Help!

[devils casper]

did you try to change resolutions ? check this thread.




casper

[zorglub76]

Hmm.. so, do you think that I should add something like "1024x250" as one of the modes (right now, with resolution 1024x768, I have about 250px visible), or should I change the depth? What is the depth, anyway? Is it the number of bits that describe one pixel, or is it the number of megabits contained by the screen area, or is it something else?..

[devils casper]

i think its a hardware problem.
regarding Depth, its in Bits. you can have 8, 16, 24 or 32 depeding on laptop's screen.




casper

[zorglub76]

Oh, I think that you misunderstood me.. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough: I do have a hardware problem with the screen - I can view only one third of it. If I connect the external monitor to the laptop, it displays everything alright. What I would like to do now (since I don't want to repare the screen) is to shrink the picture sent by laptop, so that everything is displayed in that visible third of the screen.

For example, imagine that you have a regular monitor and your desktop area is spread over the whole monitor (just as it actually is right now). Now, I want my desktop area to be spread normally in width (whole 1024px), but only 250px in height. This means that the rest of the monitor (from 250th pixel to the bottom) should be black. In other words, I want everything (whole desktop area including taskbars) to be spread in a 1024x250px rectangle. Hope that was clear enough.. Anyway, I'll try your suggestion in a moment..

[zorglub76]

Nope.. It doesn't help.. It just messes the resolution (though in a way that I didn't expect - size of the pixel is still the same, gui looks the same, only fonts are extra large..)

I was thinking of maybe changing some configuration in kernel, or even bios, but, as I mentioned, I'm still a newbie...