MDT - Video BIOS monitor detection tool
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This is a tiny program that can be run either directly or from DOS and uses
VESA BIOS functions to read monitor data. The basic purpose is to see
whether this works correctly.
For convenience, two boot ISOs are provided:
/usr/share/mdt/mdt.iso
/usr/share/mdt/mdt_dos.iso
In short: use mdt.iso unless it doesn't boot on your machine.
The difference is that mdt.iso boots directly into the test program while
mdt_dos.iso comes with FreeDOS running the test program as a small .COM
file.
mdt.iso is smaller and boots faster, but it _might_ be (some BIOSes are a
bit broken) that it does not boot on some machines. In that case try
mdt_dos.iso. Also, if you feel like debugging something, the DOS variant is
probably better.
There is no point in trying both. The programs are really identical.
Usage
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Burn the ISO to a CD and boot the CD.
The program will come up and ask you for the display port (your video output
connector) to probe. Typically ports 0, 1, or 2 are used (e.g. port 2 = DVI).
Note (seen all this with real BIOSes):
- It might be that you don't get a result if you probe a port the first
time - be persistent. :-)
- The BIOS may crash if the port number is too high.
- Higher port numbers may duplicate lower ports (e.g. your monitor shows
up at ports 0 and 2.