Display Geometry and NVIDIA cards

[ojwk]

I recognise that a lot of people have had similar problems to me however i've read the responses and they don't directly address my specific problem, so here goes..

On my Mac Pro (X1900) I have the option to rotate my display (Dell 2005FPW) so I can have it in portrait mode, this is highly useful for the purposes I need to use it for. On my older PowerMac G5 however (NV5200) I don't have this ability and I get an error message when I use spotlight to try and locate the missing tab:

The Geometry tab of Displays preferences is hidden because this display does not have geometry controls.

Obviously I know this to be false as I've used the display on Windows computers and my Mac Pro in portrait mode frequently and it's worked fine. From other threads I've established that display rotation features are not unique to ATi cards as my experience would suggest and people with even old iBooks have had the option to rotate their external display.

A common solution has appeared to be holding down the option (alt) key when clicking on the display pane of system preferences. Alas for me this has had no joy.

I'm using 10.5.2 on both Mac Pro and Power Mac G5 so there shouldn't be any difference there.

Any ideas guys?

 

[matt90]

The "Geometry" option in Display preferences is designed so that computers with CRT displays can adjust their screen in case something happens to the tube and the image gets shoved off the screen, rotated, etc. (the circuits controlling the monitor have no idea where the edge of the screen is). On the other hand, if you have an LCD screen, the exact location of each pixel is known, and it is not necessary to adjust. I don't think it's possible to rotate the display with an LCD screen.

 

[ojwk]

The "Geometry" option in Display preferences is designed so that computers with CRT displays can adjust their screen in case something happens to the tube and the image gets shoved off the screen, rotated, etc. (the circuits controlling the monitor have no idea where the edge of the screen is). On the other hand, if you have an LCD screen, the exact location of each pixel is known, and it is not necessary to adjust. I don't think it's possible to rotate the display with an LCD screen.

Rotate

Rotates the image shown on your display by the chosen amount. For example, if you have a widescreen display but would rather have a display that is taller than it is wide, you could rotate the display's image 90 degrees and then physically rotate the display. Check the documentation that came with your display to make sure you can safely operate the display when it's rotated.


That description comes from the help topic on it.

 

[joshfree]

Same issue. I have a Dell 2408WFP (which is great, by the way). It's designed to rotate. I have it plugged into my 15" MacBook Pro. No option to rotate in the Display preferences, no Option-Click or Command-Option-Clicking works. I guess maybe the video card doesn't support it, but the monitor sure does.