Widescreen display with G4?

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xgipper

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Hello

I want to buy a third party, probably 19" display to use with my powermac G4, to reclaim my desk after too long!

But I'm confused as to whether it will drive it. I've been looking at this Xerox display which says it's 1440 x 900. I've also been looking at the 19" Acer AL1916W, and also considering going up to a 20" model.

Under system prefs > displays it lists sizes right up to 1920 x 1440, but not the exact size of this monitor. Does that matter?

Apparently I have "an accelerated graphics port (AGP) " ... with two monitor ports: "a high density D-sub 15 (VGA standard) port for connecting most commonly available monitors, and a DVI port for advanced digital monitors".

But will it deal with the widescreen format? I think the Xerox has both inputs - is the DVI likely to be much better quality? Does it involve an expensive cable?

Thanks for any help. Let me know if more info is needed.
 
your mac will support any resolutions up to and including 1920x1200. which resolutions are currently supported depends on which monitor you have plugged in at the time. my iBook, for example, only has the options 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768.

VGA is analguge, and is, quite frankly, rubbish.

DVI is a pure digital signal, and looks lovely. a standar dvi cable will probably come with the monitor, but if not, then you can probably pick one up for less than $20.
 
I bought a Samsung SM940BW 19" widescreen and a DVI cable. All looks lovely - but stretched. Is this normal? I have the monitors pref on 1280 x 1024, which is the max available - which doesn't seem much like the 1440 x 900. The only other options in the Monitors prefs are 1024 x 768 (stretched), or just 1024 x 768. Both of these look poor. Is there a way to make further adjustments more appropriate to the monitor dimensions?
 
Hmm... No, you _should_ be able to select 1440*900 - the native resolution of the monitor. Get DisplayConfigX. The demo should let you at least find out whether it would work for your combination of graphics card and display. -> http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/13375
 
The demo say "This monitor supports true auto config." and all looks well.

But under 'card'/driver name it say "ATIRage128";

on the DisplayConfigX website it say: "NOT SUPPORTED: ATI Rage, Rage Mobility, Rage Pro (drivers lack required features)."

So I haven't spent to register and try it. Any other ideas to get a non-stretched image? I'm confused, particularly by the fact that, "For years, Apple sold its 16:10 widescreen monitors with G4's." Was the image stretched on that?
 
In the end I paid for the DisplayConfigX utility, which says that "This
monitor supports true auto config." I couldn't figure out from the test screen whether it was going to work or not, and the developer didn't reply to me.
But I can't seem to get it to install a 1440 x900 option in the displays menu. Is it because my graphics card perhaps won't support this format? I think it's a
ATY,Rage128Pro. Is there anything else I can do? The views expressed earlier in the thread seemed to imply that it was probably very easy to use a widescreen display with a G4.

Cheers for any advice.
 
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