[Savage40] Disabling the LCD and TV-out overscan questions

[Tim Franssen]

Hello all,

I'm having two minor problems using the S3 savage driver for my specific
purpose. In my e-mail to Tim Roberts I have explained the situation:

On 10/2/07, Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com> wrote:
>
> Tim Franssen wrote:
> > I have recently received an old Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300 series
> > laptop, and I'm trying to use it as a multimedia PC connected to a TV
> > (and primarily used through the TV). I use Option "TvOnly" and Option
> > "PAL" in my xorg.conf to tell the driver to use the TV instead of the
> > laptop LCD. This works like a charm, however it doesn't turn the
> > laptop LCD off. It doesn't receive any data anymore either, so the LCD
> > displays some really ugly white "drain" effect, which I imagine can't
> > be good for the hardware. Using the keyboard shortcut (Fn+F5) to
> > switch between video devices does turn the LCD off. Does this have
> > anything to do with the driver, and do you have any idea how I could
> > solve this problem (i.e. turn the LCD off in software any other way)?
> >
>
> What you're probably seeing is that the LCD itself is not being driven,
> but the LCD backlight is still on, so you're just seeing through the
> crystals in some "floating" state.  It doesn't do any damage, but it is
> ugly.
>
> I never figured out a reliable way to turn off the backlight.  That
> tends to be under the control of the motherboard, rather than the
> graphics chip.


Does anyone else have any idea on how to disable the LCD monitor, perhaps
through less usual means? (attaching a loose VGA connector or whatever? :-))

I'd prefer to turn it off instead of just closing the lid and forgetting
about it mainly because of the possible fire hazard... :-)

> The second question I have is if it is possible to adjust the TV
> > overscan; I can't find anything about this, but it's a quite usual
> > (and useful) feature. If it's not exposed through xorg options, can it
> > be adjusted through a config file or by modifying the source..?
> >
>
> There are registers in the chip for modifying the overscan.  I never did
> it, but I thought someone on the mailing list actually played with
> this.  You might sign up for the mailing list
> (http://www.probo.com/mailman/listinfo/savage40) and submit the
> question.  The mailing list only gets one or two message a month, so it
> won't burden you.


So, here I am. Does anyone have any experience with adjusting the overscan
of the TV-out? And if so; how much work is it to tweak it to a specific TV?

Thanks in advance for your time,

Tim Franssen