Tracy Nelson wrote:

> From: "village idiot" <village_ldi0t@yahoo.com>
> > Do I actually need to know the hardware
> > specifications?

dmesg|less might help.

> > I have no specifications for my monitor either, but
> > that I guess is easier to get hold of, since I know
> > that model. I have tried mocking a little around with
> > the vertical sync rates and stuff like that, but to no
> > avail so far.
> 
> You have to specify the H and V sync for each resolution.  Sounds nasty,
> but if you specify the range of rates your monitor can handle, XF86Setup
> will calculate and specify the possible resolutions for you.  If you
> aren't sure of the ranges, be conservative.  I remember blowing the fuse
> on a monitor while debugging an ANSI driver (wow, was that really twenty
> years ago?), it's easier than you think to overdrive a monitor and
> potentially damage it.

Maybe 20 years ago, but you can hardly destroy a normal PC monitor with
DPMS/DDC. Very very old monitors with a fixed frequency will die soon with
invalid settings. Look at /var/log/XFree*log. You should find some lines
with valid VESA modes but your monitor is probably capable of higher
frequencies.