Powerbook Screen Swap

[Gavo]

Hi, I've successfully replaced a smashed PowerBook screen with a working one from another machine, but I realized afterward that because the two machines were different models, they have different video cards.

The display is working, but it's very strange looking - it's projecting the image at about 80% scale in the upper left hand corner of the screen, with a repeat of the top of the image along a strip at the bottom of the screen and about an inch and a half of unused black space on the right.

So what I have here is a PowerBook Mercury 500 with a Rage M3 display card running a PowerBook DVI 667 display. (I think it's supposed to have a Radeon display card in it.)

My question....are there any hardware or software mods I can use to scale the screen back up to use 100% of the display space??

Gavin

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Have you tried adjusting the resolution in the "Display" pane of the System Preferences? What options does it give there?

The native resolution of the two displays is different -- 1152x768 for the 500MHz, and 1280x854 for the 667MHz. If 1280x854 isn't a supported resolution for the Rage Mobility 128, I'm afraid there's nothing that can be done to make it work -- the hardware just won't support it, period.

ATi's specs page indicate that the Rage Mobility 128 can support resolutions up to 1600x1200, but 1280x854 may be an aspect ratio it doesn't support.

I'm thinking that it can, though -- check the Displays pane and let us know what resolutions it reports. Also, a System Profiler report on the screen would be helpful...

 

[Gavo]

Hi - Yes... I forgot to say that I'd already tried changing the settings in the Displays panel...it made the regular changes but didn't affect the scaling/tiling of the whole screen, which occurs even during startup in OS 9 and OS X.

The Displays panel gives the following resolution options:

640 x 480
720 x 480
800 x 600
896 x 600
1024 x 768
1152 x 768
+ some 'stretched' versions of the above options

Here's what it says in my System Profiler about the graphics card and display (I don't think it's giving the right info for the new display though, which was taken from a PowerBook DVI):

ATY,RageM3:

Type: display
Bus: AGP
VRAM (Total): 8 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x4c46
Revision ID: 0x0002
ROM Revision: 113-XXXXX-119

Display:

Type: display
Display Type: LCD
VRAM (In Use): 8 MB
Resolution: 1152 x 768
Depth: 32-bit Color
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Built-In: Yes
Online: Yes

ATY,RageM3p12B:

Status: No display connected


Do you think there is a way to fool the Displays panel into forcing a different resolution? Maybe by hacking a system file somewhere?

Thanks for your time, you guys are great!