Help Fix My Dell^H^H^H^HMac, please.

May 27, 2006 6:20 PM

How do I fix my display resolution? Warning: This is not as simple a question as it appears to be.

On a lark (and because I have no money for a shiny new laptop) I installed Mac OS X86 on my Dell Inspiron 8600 with an Nvidia GeForce 5200 Go graphics card. Runs great. Wireless works, sound works, I'm posting from it now, in fact. But it's running at 1024 x 768; my native res is 1440 x 1050, so everything is fuzzy and stretched. Before I give up, delete my warez and return to my 100% legit copy of Windows XP (ew!) I'd like to get the display running at native resolution. Any takers?

Thus far, I've tried the procedure posted here (about halfway down the page, lucky number 13), and some of the stuff here without success. Anybody else out there willing to take a swing at this, or have a success story to share? Thanks in advance.

posted by ZakDaddy to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Not a solution, but do you have an option of setting a resolution that'll preserve your monitors aspect ratio? Not perfect but should work.
posted by aeighty at 6:35 PM on May 27, 2006

Hmm. I've never tried to do this, so I don't know what issues are involved when you try to install the x86 OS X version on PC hardware.

That said, can you use the normal System Preferences dialogue to change the resolution it's running at? (Dock --> System Preferences -->Displays) It's worth a shot, right?
posted by limeonaire at 6:41 PM on May 27, 2006

The trouble is, the OS doesn't have drivers for the card, so the only option is the failsafe generic 1024x768. Thanks for trying, though... Anyone else?
posted by ZakDaddy at 7:02 PM on May 27, 2006

Not surprised; no Mac has ever shipped with that resolution.
posted by mcwetboy at 7:18 PM on May 27, 2006

This page on setting resolutions in OpenDarwin might point you in the right direction.

Failing that, dink around with "grep -r" and see if you can find a relevant config file somewhere in /private or similar. I don't have an x86 install myself.
posted by Orb2069 at 8:13 PM on May 27, 2006