Acer 3400LMI Laptop User Manual


 
F8-x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi
performance. The tests has been run with the default size (1400x1200) and with
3000x2000, but no difference has been noticed. However, increasing the virtual
screen to more than 3000x2000 will disable hardware acceleration and of course
cripple performance completely.
These observations verifies that hardware 3D acceleration is really working and
that the radeon driver is taking care of business the way we want it to.
10.4 TV-out
TV output is available through the S-video connector on the rear of the Ferrari.
Furthermore, no special settings are needed in order to use it. It is immediate
available and may be controlled by xrandr. However, the tips below might help to
get you started.
10.4.1 Load detection
The external outputs have a property called load_detection, that controls
whether RandR should try to auto-detect the output or not. Usually it is a good
thing to be able to auto-detect the different output features. However, there are
situations when you do not want auto-detection.
Remember that we have three outputs, but only two rendering pipelines (CRTCs).
What would then happen if we try to auto-detect and configure all available
outputs, xrandr --auto, with both VGA-0 and S-video connected? We actually
do not know. The internal display may only use the first pipeline, CRTC 0, but
that might be allocated by either VGA-0 or S-video. Furthermore, we will have a
race condition between the two remaining outputs for the second pipeline,
CRTC 1. In order to avoid potential conflicts like that, auto-detection is disabled
by default for S-video.
Thus, we first have to enable load_detection in order to use the TV-output.
That is done by:
# xrandr --output --set load_detect 1
10.4.2 NTSC or PAL
The graphics chip defaults to NTSC, so those of us how want PAL need to
explicitly specify this. To change the TV mode to PAL use:
# xrandr --output S-video --set tv_standard pal
10.4.3 Initialization
The script for dual head management presented in Appendix B assumes that all
external outputs may be auto-detected. Thus, if you want the script to consider
TV-out as a possible external output you need to enable auto-detection for TV-
out.
Consequently, we need to initialize some settings before TV-out is automatically
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