Make your own monitor driver

自製螢幕驅動程式

Some Monitors don’t provide enough choices for the resolutions and it is very inconvenient in many situations. For example, my Dell E248 is a 16:10 widescreen monitor, but It provides only one 16:10 resolution(1920×1200, the native resolution), other resolutions of this monitor are all 4:3(VESA standard) or 5:4 resolutions. This annoyed me very much when I was playing games, because it’s very hard for games to run smoothly with such a high resolution like 1920×1200, and there are no other 16:10 resolutions available.

有些螢幕提供的解析度選擇很少，有些情況下使用上會造成一些問題。比如我那顆Dell E248是個16:10寬螢幕，可是他卻只提供了一個16:10解析度！(1920×1200, 原生解析度)，其它能選的全是些4:3或5:4的解析度。這讓我非常的不爽，特別是在我要打電動的時候。因為我用的又不是外星人等級的電腦，那有辦法讓每個遊戲都跑到1920×1200這種解析度啊！？而且又沒有其它16:10的解析度可以選！

I used to add custom resolutions in Nvidia Control Panel to solve this problem. But this is still not very perfect. It’s only for Nvidia cards, ATi cards don’t have similar function with the official driver. And most important of all, Some games cannot recognize the custom resolutions.
我以前的作法是用Nvidia的控制面版，設定幾個自訂解析度來用，來解決這個問題。不過這也不是個很完美的解法。這方法只能用在Nvidia的顯卡上，Ati的官方驅動程式裏面沒有提供類似的功能。而且最重要的是，有些遊戲辨認解析度的方式比較不一樣，這種自定解析度的方法就解決不了問題。

Monitors tells Windows which resolutions they can provide through EDID (a interface which monitors communicate with PCs), or they can add resolution definitions with monitor drivers. But the Dell E248 don’t have new resolution with the driver too. So I decided to make my own monitor drivers to fix this stupid Dell.
螢幕是透過一種叫作EDID的介面讓PC讀取他內部的資料，讓Windows能夠知道這螢幕支援了那些解析度。不過還有另一種方法，就是透過驅動程式。在驅動程式裏面也能增加一些原本EDID裏面沒有的解析度來讓Windows使用。不過呢，我那顆Dell E248在他的Driver裏面一樣沒有加入任何新的解析度。好吧，所以我就決定自己作一個螢幕驅動程式，來修好這個笨Dell的問題。

Tools needed:
需要的工具：

– EnTech SoftMCCS (Optional)
A EDID test tool from EnTech Taiwan. It can communicate with monitor through EDID interface, and save the EDID data into files. Windows has already read the EDID data from the monitor and saved in the Registry. So we don’t really need this tool to get EDID data, but this tool is cool. :p
這是來自台灣EnTech的一個EDID測試工具。他可以透過EDID介面和螢幕溝通，讀出EDID資料後存為檔案。 其實Windows原本就從螢幕讀出EDID的資料放到登錄檔裏面了，所以我們並不是真的很需要這個工具來獲得EDID，但這工具很酷就是。 :p

– Phoenix EDID Designer
This tool can read EDID data files saved from other tool(like SoftMCCS), and also can read from the Windows Registry. We can Change/Edit EDID data with this tool.

– EnTech Monitor Asset Manager (moninfo.exe)
Also from EnTech. We can use this tool to convert the EDID data we modified into a Windows monitor driver file(*.inf).

Procedures:
– Phoenix EDID Designer:
*Tools > Extract Registry EDID
*Click the Pencil Icon on the toolbar to enable the modify mode.
*Go to ‘Standard timing’ Tab, there are 8 settings in it. Choose the settings which are not enabled, or other setting you don’t want to use, and change to desired value.
*File>Save EDID as…
Save into a dat file.

– EnTech Monitor Asset Manager
*File>Open
Open the EDID .dat file we saved before.
*File>Creat INF
Convert the EDID data into Windows inf file.

This inf file is excatly what we need — a Windows monitor driver.

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懶得寫中文版了

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