I've been updating the driver regularly for the past few days, this morning I finally got X to start with nothing attached to the VGA port, but the panel was blank. I could log in remotely, but restarting Xorg with the vesa driver did not change the display, it was still blank. I had to reboot to get a working display. Laptops typically have both a BIOS setup option that says which display output to enable at bootup, and a button to switch between display configurations. I don't know if these settings have an effect on the detection done by the "conntest" program. Anyway, in my case, the BIOS was set to Panel+VGA Machine specs: Lenovo T60, Type: 2008-CTO Panel: 1400x1050 VGA port lspci -n : 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility X1400 [1002:7145] rhd_conntest results With no VGA monitor attached: Checking connectors on 0x7145, 0x17AA, 0x2006 (@01:00:00): Load Detection: RHD_OUTPUT_NONE HotPlug: RHD_HPD_NONE DDC: RHD_DDC_2 LVDS Info: 18bits, dual link, LDI Panel found. Power Timing: 0x465, 0x00F, 0x10, 0x64, 0x2A8 Macro: 0x0B520407, Clock Pattern: 0x0063 With VGA monitor attached: Checking connectors on 0x7145, 0x17AA, 0x2006 (@01:00:00): Load Detection: RHD_OUTPUT_DACA HotPlug: RHD_HPD_NONE DDC: RHD_DDC_0 RHD_DDC_2 LVDS Info: 18bits, dual link, LDI Panel found. Power Timing: 0x465, 0x00F, 0x10, 0x64, 0x2A8 Macro: 0x0B520407, Clock Pattern: 0x0063 Xorg log file is attached. _____ Dofri