Xorg and a Barco monitor

I’ve added a nice big Barco MDCC-6230 6 megapixel monitor to my work computer. The monitor comes from a radiology diagnostic workstation that was being taken out of commission, so I managed to get the monitor and an nVidia Quadro P1000 video card to drive it.

Out of the box, I had a hard time getting Fedora to use the resolutions the monitor was capable of and it would only run the Barco monitor at 1024×768.

Thanks to the collective knowledge of the Internet, I figured out how to use xrandr to get the video card to drive the monitor at its full resolution (3280×2048) and arrange the displays the way I wanted them.

# Create a new display mode.  Modeline info came from the Xorg log file.
# (II) NOUVEAU(0): Modeline "1640x2048"x49.9  188.50  1640 1688 1720 1800  2048 2051 2061 2097 +hsync -vsync (104.7 kHz UP)
xrandr --newmode "1640x2048" 188.50  1640 1688 1720 1800  2048 2051 2061 2097 +hsync -vsync

# Add the new modes to the video card outputs connected to the Barco
xrandr --addmode DP-1 1640x2048
xrandr --addmode DP-2 1640x2048

# Configure the video card outputs
xrandr --output DP-2 --mode 1640x2048 --pos 0x0 --primary
xrandr --output DP-1 --mode 1640x2048 --right-of DP-2
xrandr --output DP-3 --mode 1600x1200 --pos 3280x848

Unfortunately, whenever I logged out or rebooted, the computer reverted to the original 1024×768 configuration. Getting the display configuration to persist across logins and reboots meant getting X Windows configured properly. It took a while, but I figured out a working set of xorg.conf configuration directives that worked (placed in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf).

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nouveau"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "Quadro P1000"
    Screen         0
    Option         "Monitor-DP-1" "Monitor0"
    Option         "Monitor-DP-2" "Monitor1"
    Option         "Monitor-DP-3" "Monitor2"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    Option         "Monitor-DP-1" "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Barco"
    ModelName      "BDS MDCC-6230"
    ModeLine       "1640x2048"  188.50  1640 1688 1720 1800  2048 2051 2061 2097 +hsync -vsync
    Option         "PreferredMode" "1640x2048"
    Option         "DPMS"
    Option         "Position" "1640 0"
    Option         "DisplaySize" "327 409"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    Option         "Monitor-DP-2" "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Barco"
    ModelName      "BDS MDCC-6230"
    ModeLine       "1640x2048"  188.50  1640 1688 1720 1800  2048 2051 2061 2097 +hsync -vsync
    Option         "PreferredMode" "1640x2048"
    Option         "DPMS"
    Option         "Primary"
    Option         "Position" "0 0"
    Option         "DisplaySize" "327 409"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor2"
    Option         "Monitor-DP-3" "Monitor2"
    VendorName     "Planar Systems"
    ModelName      "PX212M"
    ModeLine       "1600x1200"  162.00  1600 1664 1856 2160  1200 1201 1204 1250 +hsync +vsync
    Option         "PreferredMode" "1600x1200"
    Option         "DPMS"
    Option         "Position" "3280 848"
    Option         "DisplaySize" "432 324"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    Monitor        "Monitor2"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
    Option         "metamodes" "DP-2: 1640x2048 +0+0, DP-1: 1640x2048 +1640+0, DP-3: 1600x1200 +3280+848"
EndSection

The Xorg log tells me some of the configuration directives aren’t used, but everything works so I’ll leave it alone for now.

Now my work computer desktop has a total of 3280×2048 + 1600×1200 pixels (across two monitors) of workspace for me to do stuff in. I wonder if I can get Xorg set up so that the Barco gets used as a single monitor instead of two virtual monitors.