Howto do modesetting with R420??

[psychotron]

That's already supported on LVDS.

You mean scaling while keeping the aspect ratio? Thats nice to hear, as my laptop also uses the radeon driver. But which config option would that be? I can't find any that looks like doing this.

[agd5f]

You can see all of the output parameters with "xrandr --verbose". In this case it's called "scaling mode". So to change it:
xrandr --output LVDS --set "scaling mode" Center

[psychotron]

Hmm, this doesn't seem to work with my laptop. The xrandr command you gave does nothing. And the output of xrandr --verbose (see below) doesn't look like it should...

Package version is: xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:6.12.2-0ubuntu1~xup~1
The card is a RV250, Mobility 9000.

LVDS connected 1400x1050+0+0 (0x4f) normal (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
Identifier: 0x4d
Timestamp: 53890
Subpixel: horizontal rgb
Clones:
CRTC: 0
CRTCs: 0
Panning: 0x0+0+0
Tracking: 0x0+0+0
Border: 0/0/0/0
Transform: 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
0.000000 1.000000 0.000000
0.000000 0.000000 1.000000
filter:
scaler: full
1400x1050 (0x4f) 108.0MHz *current +preferred
h: width 1400 start 1448 end 1560 total 1640 skew 0 clock 65.9KHz
v: height 1050 start 1051 end 1054 total 1065 clock 61.8Hz
[...]

[agd5f]

Looks like you are using UMS on your laptop. The option is called scaler in that case.
xrandr --output LVDS --set scaler center

Note that aspect scaling is only supported on avivo radeons (r5xx and up). Previous asics currently only support full and center.

[psychotron]

Ok, nevermind. It's not so important on the laptop. It was more out of curiousity that I asked.

Note that aspect scaling is only supported on avivo radeons (r5xx and up). Previous asics currently only support full and center.

Oh, does that mean the scaling depends on hardware features? That would explain why aspect scaling for the R420 doesn't even work on windows. It offers the option, but nothing happens.

Anyway, thanks for you kind answers!

[agd5f]

I think it should be possible, but I never had time to fiddle with it on the older display engines.