HOWTO.txt 2.6 KB

12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152535455565758
  1. In the good old days when graphics parameters were configured explicitly
  2. in a file called xorg.conf, even broken hardware could be managed.
  3. Today, with the advent of Kernel Mode Setting, a graphics board is
  4. either correctly working because all components follow the standards -
  5. or the computer is unusable, because the screen remains dark after
  6. booting or it displays the wrong area. Cases when this happens are:
  7. - The graphics board does not recognize the monitor.
  8. - The graphics board is unable to detect any EDID data.
  9. - The graphics board incorrectly forwards EDID data to the driver.
  10. - The monitor sends no or bogus EDID data.
  11. - A KVM sends its own EDID data instead of querying the connected monitor.
  12. Adding the kernel parameter "nomodeset" helps in most cases, but causes
  13. restrictions later on.
  14. As a remedy for such situations, the kernel configuration item
  15. CONFIG_DRM_LOAD_EDID_FIRMWARE was introduced. It allows to provide an
  16. individually prepared or corrected EDID data set in the /lib/firmware
  17. directory from where it is loaded via the firmware interface. The code
  18. (see drivers/gpu/drm/drm_edid_load.c) contains built-in data sets for
  19. commonly used screen resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200,
  20. 1680x1050, 1920x1080) as binary blobs, but the kernel source tree does
  21. not contain code to create these data. In order to elucidate the origin
  22. of the built-in binary EDID blobs and to facilitate the creation of
  23. individual data for a specific misbehaving monitor, commented sources
  24. and a Makefile environment are given here.
  25. To create binary EDID and C source code files from the existing data
  26. material, simply type "make".
  27. If you want to create your own EDID file, copy the file 1024x768.S,
  28. replace the settings with your own data and add a new target to the
  29. Makefile. Please note that the EDID data structure expects the timing
  30. values in a different way as compared to the standard X11 format.
  31. X11:
  32. HTimings: hdisp hsyncstart hsyncend htotal
  33. VTimings: vdisp vsyncstart vsyncend vtotal
  34. EDID:
  35. #define XPIX hdisp
  36. #define XBLANK htotal-hdisp
  37. #define XOFFSET hsyncstart-hdisp
  38. #define XPULSE hsyncend-hsyncstart
  39. #define YPIX vdisp
  40. #define YBLANK vtotal-vdisp
  41. #define YOFFSET (63+(vsyncstart-vdisp))
  42. #define YPULSE (63+(vsyncend-vsyncstart))
  43. The CRC value in the last line
  44. #define CRC 0x55
  45. also is a bit tricky. After a first version of the binary data set is
  46. created, it must be checked with the "edid-decode" utility which will
  47. most probably complain about a wrong CRC. Fortunately, the utility also
  48. displays the correct CRC which must then be inserted into the source
  49. file. After the make procedure is repeated, the EDID data set is ready
  50. to be used.