[RndTbl] Query your CRT Monitor EDID using ddc-control - but not
yer LCD
John D
jd at Westman.Wave.Ca
Sun Nov 19 05:20:07 CST 2006
Hello
Further to a question at MUUG Nov. RoundTable, about the nature of the data
exchanged when we (or xorgconfig does a) "probe for type of monitor"
VESA-compliant video cards (post'94) have a function to ask an attached
monitor its EDID info.
This handy VESA function is nicely explained by:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data
Unfortunately, modern flat displays and TVs are not well represented under
EDID paradigms.
EDID data for a monitor is programmed into a serial (usu.i2c friendly) PROM at
manufacture. This self-descriptor keeps enough data to be capable of being
"verbose" when queried; e.g: Mfg ID, Prod ID, SerNum, WkMfg, YrMfg, HSync,
VSync, Resolution (EDID "thinks" this geometry must be multiple-of-8)
However, the recent Linux version of _ddc-control_ includes a separate
XML-formatted db, which has been updated as recently as 2006-10.
Haven't read inside latest _ddc-control_:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=117933
-but I suspect its useage is de-volving (at least for LCD and 'wide' displays)
to a terse query from monitor, getting just the Maker, Model, and then using
those to do a lookup in the XML-db.
Another Linux tool _read-edid_ also reads info from monitor:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/read-edid/
Assembler and x86 machine language fans will enjoy this 2003-04 kernel snippet-
http://lwn.net/Articles/27597/
smiles,
John D
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