x50v 640x480 or 639x480?

deamhan faerie · 12-11-04, 05:04 PM

So i am developing a game... and was having issues with the last row of pixels on the bottom.

These apps are for portrait mode. They leave the background alone so you can have good contrast. they draw a single red line around the edge of the screen.

Border test 1
does DrawRectangle(red, 0, 0, 479, 639);
http://df.no-ip.org/dfi/EdgeTest1.net.exe
This should draw a 640x480 box around the edge of the screen. It works correctly in the VGA emulator. On my x50v, there is no line on the bottom of the screen.

Border test 2
http://df.no-ip.org/dfi/EdgeTest2.net.exe
DrawRectangle(red, 0, 0, 479, 638);
This should draw a 639x480 box around the edge of the screen, except a 1 pixel gap across the bottom. This one perfectly goes around the edge of my x50v

So, is this my unit? Or is this a all/multiple units? test these out on yer x50v and let me know =) need to copy these to your unit and run it.

deamhan faerie · 12-11-04, 10:43 PM

anyone? nobody is curious if they are missing a whole row of pixels? i know i'm anxious to see if its just me...

I dont want to bother ordering a replacement from dell if they all have this.

12-11-04, 10:53 PM

I tried them both with the same results you got.

I'm not all that surprised as my Toshiba laptop is marketed as having a 1600x1200 screen, but is actually 1588x1200.

Still, kinda odd that its only 1 pixel. Makes me wonder if there's just a difference in the implementation of DrawRectangle. Could it possibly be that it includes the thickness of the line in the dimensions? What happens if you use a pen 2 pixels wide? Maybe its trying to center the width of the line on the dimensions you pass, but the rounding works differently.

I'm not sure, but those are a few experiments you can try.

Jon

emulamer · 12-12-04, 12:09 AM

I tried it drawing directly to the framebuffer and it looks like it's missing the bottom row. It's also kind of weird that the top/left lines are alot heavier than the bottom/right ones.

code:

unsigned short *t;
t = (unsigned short *) 0xBC000000; //location of the framebuffer
for (int y = 0; y < 640; y++)
for (int x = 0; x < 480; x++)
if (y == 0 || y == 639 || x == 0 || x == 479)
t[x+(y*480)] = 0x1f << 11;

12-12-04, 04:25 AM

Not visible, I see (not). The main window typically has a border, which is black anyway, and two pixels wide to boot, so no big loss. The line (red, purple, whatever) is there on a full screen capture.

SunWon · 12-12-04, 10:22 AM

Could it be a flaw with the GAPI driver? Can someone test this on a different brand VGA device?

Never mine, I see you also tried the framebuffer. Maybe the Intel chip? Good luck getting Dell to answer this one.

SunWon

emulamer · 12-12-04, 02:20 PM

Originally Posted by 40th Floor

Not visible, I see (not). The main window typically has a border, which is black anyway, and two pixels wide to boot, so no big loss. The line (red, purple, whatever) is there on a full screen capture.

I don't doubt that the framebuffer's 640x480, I just wonder about the LCD panel. It's not that great quality wise anyways (lots of people with dead pixels, task bar burn in) so it woudln't surprise me if it was missing a row at the bottom.

SunWon · 12-12-04, 02:52 PM

Hard to tell if it is "lots of people" since we don't have actual sales figures to use for analysis. Could also only be a limited product run problem, also no data to analyze, only Dell knows. And I seriously doubt they will respond to questions.

SunWon

emulamer · 12-12-04, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by SunWon

Hard to tell if it is "lots of people" since we don't have actual sales figures to use for analysis. Could also only be a limited product run problem, also no data to analyze, only Dell knows. And I seriously doubt they will respond to questions.

SunWon

Ok, "at least a few people" ;) I just feel that the screen on the X50v isn't of the best quality based on what I personally have seen (task bar line burns in if you leave it on for a few hours, high contrast colors bleed horizontally, poor viewing angle), so it wouldn't surprise me if there's a row of pixels missing in addition to these things.

edit: I guess I should say this in addition: While I would have paid an extra $20-$30 for a better quality screen, it's far from bad and I still think the X50v is worlds above other similar PDAs overall. It may even be that these are issues with all hi res PDA screens and I just haven't had any to compare against. So if you're thinking about buying one, the screen is still 100x better than any QVGA version, these are just some annoyances I've had with it.

emulamer · 12-19-04, 06:53 PM

Just wanted to make an update incase anybody cares... the screen is 640x480, however the 2700G is not using the top row of pixels, and everything is pushed down by one row. Not sure why that's the case...

12-19-04, 09:22 PM

Odd. Thanks for the info though. :)

SunWon · 12-19-04, 10:03 PM

"2700G is not using the top row of pixels", I would hope Intel would issue a fix for there driver? How in the world does something like this get past 'quality control'? Looks like Intel and/or Dell are complacent. Although, I would suspect Dell trusted Intel so I would place the blame mostly on Intel.

SunWon

dogfood · 01-11-06, 02:40 PM

Found this thread from the past before I was just about to post a new one for the same problem. Yes, my x50v only has 639x480 visible area under true vga mode. But if I do a screen capture, with any capturing software, the last line is in the captured image. It simply isn't visible on the display.