[PLUG] Projector frustration

[John Jason Jordan]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:58:21 -0800
Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> dijo:

>> I plan to tinker with it some more at the Clinic. But at this point
>> it looks doubtful that it can be made to work.
>
>I will endeavor (remind me Sunday morning) to bring my projector to
>the Clinic, and we will debug this summich.  However, that will put
>two normally-helps-others folks offline.  Could you (yes, you the
>intelligent and helpful person reading this) show up and help us
>help others?
>
>I imagine John's Thinkpad will need some tweaking, perhaps even 
>some driver compiling, but if we miraculously succeed early, we
>can try a few other laptops on the projector.

I was thinking of asking Keith to bring his projector, so I'm glad to
hear he will do so. 

Another point: I was still wrong about the projector in FAB 86-01. But
now I am positive because I got someone from the Doghouse use his key
to let me in the room. It is a Hitachi CP-SX1350:

http://www.projectorcentral.com/Hitachi-CP-SX1350.htm

<By the way, there is a used one for sale on eBay for $418 with free
shipping. The price for a new one online is around $3,700. Yikes!>

And I note that its native resolution is 1400x1050. The one I was
testing with in an open classroom had a native resolution of 1024x768,
although both are listed as having a maximum resolution of 1600x1200.

All those resolutions are odd numbers compared to what we are
accustomed to on computer screens. Several people have told me that the
projector will sense what the computer is sending it and sync to it if
it is within the projector's range. My laptop normally runs at
1680x1050, so I tried setting its resolution down to 1280x1024 to test
it. Didn't work. 

Someone else said xrandr will work with some of the nVidia drivers and
can be used to change the resolution on the projector. I tried that as
well, as root. The commands I tried all executed without error, but
made no difference in the projector's resolution.