"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
s.com...
Help! Just got a new (to me) monitor that a friend disposed of; plugged it
into my 'puter, but it looks horrible.

Monitor is a 19" flat-screen (not flat-panel) Dell Trinitron (which I
assume is actually a Sony tube?). Friend said it was working fine for him
(he got rid of it since he got a flat-panel display to replace it).


It's amazing what some people deem 'working fine', it's all about
perceptions. Maybe he could see it and tell you if it's how he remembers it?

Previous monitor works fine, color-wise, so I know it's not my video card.
This is on a PC (standard SVGA). I have my display set at 1152x864, 32-bit
True Color, if it makes a diff.

The plug looks fine; no bent or missing pins (well, except for pin 10,
which is missing in purpose on all SVGA plugs).

The display is very low contrast and washed-out looking, even with the
contrast control cranked all the way up. Plus there are several (9, to be
exact) diagonal lines across the width of the screen. Degaussing (via OSD)
makes no difference.

Not a huge deal, since this was a freebie, but I'd like to know if there's
some easy fix here before I pitch this thing.


Any CRT which displays retrace lines has to be suspect. IOW, the CRT is
likely near the end of its life. It's not a cast iron certainty, but quite
likely.

Morse