# 9 megapixel lcd: IBM T221 or Viewsonic VP2290B: w/ ATI?

## dh003i

Does anyone here know if modern graphics cards, like the Radeon 2x dual-dvi cards, or the new Asus 4x dual-dvi 3850 X2, can power the IBM T221 9-megapixel lcds? (or the rebranded Viewsonic 9mp lcds)? I've read something about the dvi ports needing to be "genlocked"

The Matrox Parhelia HR256 is outrageously priced for a card released in 2002, at $621 from the cheapest online retailer (HP). I would think that today's graphics cards -- the ones with 2x dual-dvi ports, or 4x dual-dvi ports -- have enough power to power these lcds. But what does this genlocked business mean?

Has anyone gotten one of these kind of 9mp lcds to work under Linux? (without using the Parhelia HR256 card, which I think is outrageously priced for a card so old).

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## drtebi

 *dh003i wrote:*   

> Does anyone here know if modern graphics cards, like the Radeon 2x dual-dvi cards, or the new Asus 4x dual-dvi 3850 X2, can power the IBM T221 9-megapixel lcds? (or the rebranded Viewsonic 9mp lcds)? I've read something about the dvi ports needing to be "genlocked"
> 
> The Matrox Parhelia HR256 is outrageously priced for a card released in 2002, at $621 from the cheapest online retailer (HP). I would think that today's graphics cards -- the ones with 2x dual-dvi ports, or 4x dual-dvi ports -- have enough power to power these lcds. But what does this genlocked business mean?
> 
> Has anyone gotten one of these kind of 9mp lcds to work under Linux? (without using the Parhelia HR256 card, which I think is outrageously priced for a card so old).

 

It probably doesn't make much sense to answer to such an old post... but I'll do it anyway  :Smile: 

I recently got a T221 (the price dropped significantly over the years) and got it to work quite well under Ubuntu 10.04. As far as I understand, it will run with most video cards that have two DVI outputs. Mine is a ATI Radeon 4800HD. I am using the ATI driver, and after a bit of tweaking now got one seamless Gnome 2 desktop running. It's running at only 20hz, which is a bit slow for videos etc., but for that you can just set it to use one DVI output and switch to a lower resolution (sounds strange, but it will use the entire screen regardless). 

It takes a bit of tweaking to get everything to work, but, especially if for photography, it is amazing. I work with a lot of medium format scans at 70 megapixels, downscaled to 9 megapixels (the T221's resolution) they look fantastic. Just like an illuminated printed image--even at very close distance it's hard to see any pixels at all.

I recently tried to upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 (forgive me, but I am not a Gentoo fan), but had issues with the new desktop environments. I will have to stick to the older version I guess. On Windows--forget it. Well, so far I get nothing but a black screen when trying to set to full resolution. According to another T221 owner, ATI drivers are better on Linux for this monitor than on Windows. But I can live happily without windows, and in the worst case, I will just run Windows XP in a virtualbox, which works also fine with my setup.

Anyway, long story short, a fantastic monitor if you can live with the limitations it comes with.

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