Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / February 2004

Well, I'm in a bit of a pickle. I'm going to describe it. Try not to
laugh. :)

I recently downgraded from a 21" monitor to a 19". Hopefully
temporarily, but let's not get into that...

The problem is that my Powerbook was set to display a resolution the
19" couldn't handle, both in dual display (with the external as the
main display) and clamshell mode.

I fixed the dual display mode in a clever (I think!) way, which I'm
going to document just in case someone is googling for this later. :)
The new Powerbooks sense automatically when a monitor is plugged in
and automatically adjust your desktop. So I started to drag the
Displays window, then plugged in the display. I ended up dragging the
external monitor's display, and I set it to a good resolution.

However, clamshell mode seems to be stored somewhere else. It still
comes up at too high a resolution, and I haven't been able to find a
way to fix this. I tried trashing the display preferences
(com.apple.display, I think?) and zapping the PRAM, but apparently
this setting isn't stored where I thought.

Any suggestions?

(It should be noted, for those about to cry out "don't use clamshell,"
that there's just two problems with that: 1. This model Powerbook is
designed to operate that way; and 2. I run it this way just long
enough for it to decide to not to put a picture on the internal
screen, then I open it up for better heat dissipation. Saves the
display backlight. So don't go there, okay?)