[vox-tech] 10 year old monitor finally died

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Jimbo (evesautomotive at charter.net):

> I knew it was going but thought I had a little bit more time.  Bought new 
> monitor (Samsung syncmaster 203b)  and am worried about starting debian on 
> old monitor settings.  Will things auto detect?

Usually, sure.  X11 queries each individual monitor for its DDC2/EDID
information (see:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDID), and sets the
scanning frequencies accordingly -- except that it won't go outside any
limits that might be embodied in the VertRefresh and HorizSync lines of
your X configuration file.

> If no auto detect can I edit some files w/o booting into kde first?  I do 
> know what the horizontal and vertical refresh rates are so I'm not going 
> into this blind.

Sure, you can always put those into the "Monitor" section, just to be
sure.  FWIW, I tend to put ridiculously wide values into such lines for
starters, and then narrow them if I have problems.   Like this:

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
        ModelName    "IBM 9514-B TFT Panel"
        HorizSync    48.0 - 65.0
        VertRefresh  60.0 - 75.0
        Option      "dpms"
EndSection