7" HDMI LCD Screen resolution, text unreadable

[cheaptrick666]

Hey guys,

I bought this little guy to get easier access to my boot menu since attaching a monitor every time was bothering me.
Unfortunately on that small screen I can't see the text properly. Do you have any idea how to change the resolution?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

This might be helpful:

loader.conf(5)

man.freebsd.org

Look for efi_max_resolution. Then create a tunable of type LOADER in the TrueNAS UI.

 

[jgreco]

Something like vidcontrol -f 16x32 /usr/share/vt/fonts/vgarom-16x32.fnt ..?

 

[cheaptrick666]

This might be helpful:

loader.conf(5)

man.freebsd.org

Look for efi_max_resolution. Then create a tunable of type LOADER in the TrueNAS UI.

Would this be correct?

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

Common 7" resolution is 1024x600. Sometimes a panel reports 1920x1080 for marketing purposes--it requires a software down-converter (I *think* Windows 10 can handle this natively, the Raspberry Pi should probably work fine with it as the 7" displays are primarily aimed at the Pi, but that depends on your display). GRUB would bork on this if not told what the resolution really is. If you have a 1920x1080 display check if native is actually 1024x600.

 

[cheaptrick666]

Something like vidcontrol -f 16x32 /usr/share/vt/fonts/vgarom-16x32.fnt ..?

That did the trick. Thank you so much :)

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

While that solves your problem immediately, it's not persistent across a reboot. I'd try the tunable, too. The data sheet of your display should tell you the native resolution.

 

[cheaptrick666]

Common 7" resolution is 1024x600. Sometimes a panel reports 1920x1080 for marketing purposes--it requires a software down-converter (I *think* the Windows 10 can handle this natively). GRUB would bork on this if not told what the resolution really is. If you have a 1920x1080 display check if native is actually 1024x600.

In Windows 10 it shows up fine and actually gets recognized as 1080p. It is this one

Amazon.de

@Patrick M. Hausen I am aware. I will try the tunable.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Try "800x480", then ;)

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

640x400 is the closest rather unique resolution used on the Atari ST mono and Amiga OCS, not all video cards will support that. A close standard computer resolution is 640x480 (MCGA and VGA).

Since 800 x 600 is Super VGA you may have more luck (in the future) with that:

Amazon.de : 7 inch HDMI LCD 1024x600

 

[cheaptrick666]

Try "800x480", then ;)

Oh :). Maybe I am setting the tunable wrong but it does not seem to work. Am I missing anything?

 

[jgreco]

While that solves your problem immediately, it's not persistent across a reboot. I'd try the tunable, too. The data sheet of your display should tell you the native resolution.

You can make it persistent across a reboot with a startup task. I didn't have any physical hardware that was sufficiently braindamaged to try this on so it was just kind of a random guess, if nothing else it is getting your toes wet in the craptacular world of VT font fun. I am probably angst filled on this topic as I see an 80x24 DEC VT100 as a fairly reasonable display and I really hate the 120 column 48 row thing VT seems to default to. The closest I was able to come to a fix for our installer was to stick efi_max_resolution="480p" into /boot/loader.conf.local (on a standard FreeBSD system), which could also be done with a loader tunable on CORE. That ends up with an 80x30 display at a reasonable resolution for those of us who work extensively with virtual consoles and would prefer something sized sort of like the old syscons 80x25. The problem is that it really depends on the physical hardware when you're actually sending a signal out to an LCD panel, and that seems more finicky when I was experimenting with it on hardware.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Same for me - I guessed from the documentation. Possibly 640x480 will work.

 

[jgreco]

Same for me - I guessed from the documentation. Possibly 640x480 will work.

The guessing game with VT is very frustrating. Lots of stuff was simply omitted (visual bell, cursor blink, screensaver come to mind) and some other bits are simply frustratingly complicated. Or maybe I'm just too old for this stuff.

 

[jgreco]

My notes on vt include the following link to a mailing list article that I found helpful.

vt(4) "newcons" and 80x25 vty? (tested: 10.1-BETA2)

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I thought EFI console was a different beast altigether? Like a screenbuffer? And vt is just an 80x25 VGA text display?

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

The guessing game with VT is very frustrating. Lots of stuff was simply omitted (visual bell, cursor blink, screensaver come to mind) and some other bits are simply frustratingly complicated. Or maybe I'm just too old for this stuff.

I have experience with mainframes having green dumb terminals wired into the back (yellow wasn't even close to an option then). Maybe there were 16 terminals maximum, and that was an awesome site to see. Only a handful of years before that (and before my personal experience) punch-cards will still used and terminals weren't available. After that came the VT100, those were modern terminals!

You're not old, relatively speaking.

I thought EFI console was a different beast altigether? Like a screenbuffer? And vt is just an 80x25 VGA text display?

VT-52


VT-52 Manual

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I know what a DEC VT is. I am old enough to have worked on a couple of different iterations, 220, 320, 52x ... not old enough for 52, though
I was referring to the FreeBSD vt(4) console driver. And VGA compared to EFI.