Dell 1901FP LCD Monitor cannot view in portrait mode on Mac OS 10.4

Question

Hi,

I have a great Dell Monitor (1901FP), with an older Macintosh system that I use for web design. It's a Blue and White G3 (450Mhz - I know... slow) running OS 10.4.8. It's surprisingly usable for web design. Anyway, This operating system is supposed to support portrait mode (i.e. screen rotation) but I have been unable to make it happen on my system. I have an ATI Rage 128 graphics card that came with the system, which I've been told also supports screen rotation. I bought the nice Dell Monitor so I could have accurate color profiles and a great viewing surface for the design work I do. The screen rotation feature would be an amazing boost to my computing experience if I could get it to work.

I saw online that Dell offers drivers for WinXP to support this feature, but saw no such drivers for Mac. Is this something Dell offers - or is the 1901FP simply not supported with Mac OS X? It would be ashame if that was the case since I was given no indication ahead of time!

Thanks for your input - please let me know if you have any solutions for this issue.

Tim

x_lab rat · Answer

Welcome, Tim.  Upfront, I don't have a fix to offer you.  Some discussion, because like you intone, it ought to work.  I had a 1901FP in the lab which would display portrait/rotate as long as the video driver offered it.  You say your driver offers it, but if you select it there is no response?  If you go back to the driver, has the selection been cancelled or does it still 'think' it's rotated?  Does 'flip H' or 'flip V' work?  Does Mac support have anything to say?  (I take it ATI support is only through resellers?)   Digital video has had rotate since 1980.  It took an 8-foot rack of microwave-oven size modules to do digital video back then, but rotation is just an alternative addressing algorithm (like all digital motion, rescaling, repositioning)--it's virtually hardware-independent.  And except for the flashrom that identifies it as Dell, the 1901FP is just a relabled version of a Sharp, Samsung, or Sanyo product.   Mac/Apple has always leaned heavily toward proprietary everything.  Compaq did that too--look where they are today.  It makes questionable economic sense to deliberately produce incompatible products.  But major companies like JVC, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba still do, to this day.  Hence the confounding array of CD/DVD/-R/+R/-RW/+RW/-RWVR/RAM/-DL, when it's been demonstrated that VHS and Betamax can't coexist.   I'm drawn to conclude that for whatever reason, your set of components (Mac version of ATI card, OS-X version of driver, Dell display) have conspired not to fully support each other.

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Dell 1901FP LCD Monitor cannot view in portrait mode on Mac OS 10.4

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