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).

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.


--
Just as McDonald's is where you go when you're hungry but don't really
care about the quality of your food, Wikipedia is where you go when
you're curious but don't really care about the quality of your knowledge.

- Matthew White's WikiWatch (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm)

David Nebenzahl wrote:
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).

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.




If it happened suddenly, it may have been damaged in moving it around. I
know the 22" Sony tube monitors have an issue with the brightness going
up over time, there's a hack to add a resistor to bring things back down
to where they should be.

Yuki spake thus:

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 15:30:22 -0800, David Nebenzahl
wrote:

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).

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.

Check if there is a switch in the back for selecting beetwen 0.7V or 1V video
signals.

Wrong selection produce these symptoms.

Nope, no switch.

But hey, I think I just solved the problem: by dinking around with the
OSD menus, I found something called "Color return", whatever the hell
that means, under the (ungrammatical) "Option" menu. When I activated
it, the screen went whitish-blue for a few seconds, and when the display
came back, it was better. Not perfect, but definitely not as washed-out
looking.

Anyone know what this function does?


--
Just as McDonald's is where you go when you're hungry but don't really
care about the quality of your food, Wikipedia is where you go when
you're curious but don't really care about the quality of your knowledge.

- Matthew White's WikiWatch (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm)

"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

"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
s.com...

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.

Brightness is too high. Sometimes there are internal 'master' contrast and
brightness controls, however mark the position of any that you alter with a
pencil first.





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..
..
..

Please, don't open a monitor, unless you are quite familiar with them!
You can get a bad shock, or
worse! This is one way to do a "work around", for the problem! I have
done a couple, & it works fine.
You MAY have to "tweak" the exact resistor value, to get a good G-2
"range"! Hope this helps, Dani.

Dani spake thus:

Please, don't open a monitor, unless you are quite familiar with them!
You can get a bad shock, or
worse! This is one way to do a "work around", for the problem! I have
done a couple, & it works fine.
You MAY have to "tweak" the exact resistor value, to get a good G-2
"range"!

You must not have read my reply up there in this thread. I managed to
get it looking fine by using a built-in function (which, by the way, I'm
still curious to know what exactly it does: it's called "COLOR RETURN"
in the "OPTION" menu).

So what, pray tell, is a "G-2" range? Don't worry; I know all about
resistors, and high voltages, and shocks, and all that. No need to
nanny-state me with all the dire warnings.


--
Just as McDonald's is where you go when you're hungry but don't really
care about the quality of your food, Wikipedia is where you go when
you're curious but don't really care about the quality of your knowledge.

- Matthew White's WikiWatch (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm)

"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
s.com...

So what, pray tell, is a "G-2" range?

G2 voltage. See any book on how TV sets work.

Meat Plow spake thus:

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 21:12:15 -0800, David Nebenzahl Has Frothed:

Dani spake thus:

Please, don't open a monitor, unless you are quite familiar with them!
You can get a bad shock, or
worse! This is one way to do a "work around", for the problem! I have
done a couple, & it works fine.
You MAY have to "tweak" the exact resistor value, to get a good G-2
"range"!

You must not have read my reply up there in this thread. I managed to
get it looking fine by using a built-in function (which, by the way, I'm
still curious to know what exactly it does: it's called "COLOR RETURN"
in the "OPTION" menu).

So what, pray tell, is a "G-2" range? Don't worry; I know all about
resistors, and high voltages, and shocks, and all that. No need to
nanny-state me with all the dire warnings.

So you know all about CRT devices but don't know about the CRT's g2 grid?
The warnings are for your saftey and the potential saftey of others
reading these threads.

No, I had never heard that term before. I do know about CRTs (not *all*
about them, obviously), but I'm not in the TV repair business and don't
know all the jargon. So sue me.

By the way, I did look up "G2" on Google, and discovered that it seems
to indicate a grid (2nd grid, I'm assuming) on vacuum tubes in general,
not just CRTs; found references to 6550s and such.

But I do know all about high voltages, and know enough to be damn
careful with the innards of any TV set or monitor. The two aren't
mutually exclusive, you know, so you can lay off your warnings, as
well-intentioned as they may be.


--
Just as McDonald's is where you go when you're hungry but don't really
care about the quality of your food, Wikipedia is where you go when
you're curious but don't really care about the quality of your knowledge.

- Matthew White's WikiWatch (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm)

David Nebenzahl wrote:
Meat Plow spake thus:
On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 21:12:15 -0800, David Nebenzahl Has Frothed:
Dani spake thus:

So you know all about CRT devices but don't know about the CRT's g2 grid?
The warnings are for your saftey and the potential saftey of others
reading these threads.

No, I had never heard that term before. I do know about CRTs (not *all*
about them, obviously), but I'm not in the TV repair business and don't
know all the jargon. So sue me.

Most common cause of washed out appearance IME is a monitor set to high
colour temperature. Set to 5000K or so they look much better. But that
in itself doesnt address the misadjusted black level, that will need a
tweak inside to sort. As well as the safety issues you dont want to
hear about, also dont turn a preset more than needed, as some presets
will kill a set if turned too far.

Lets hope you know more about CRT safety than you're letting on.


NT

Meat Plow wrote:

Seeing you have an attitude problem with my *free* help, I guess I'll lay
off any help (30 years experience in the service field) I can offer you.

Meat Plow, you did the guy a favor. You taught him a lesson about what
happens if you run your mouth on Usenet.

I had an Iiyama CRT monitor that I thought was "working fine" until I
set an LCD monitor up next to it. Boy did it look washed out and bleary!

wrote:
I had an Iiyama CRT monitor that I thought was "working fine" until I
set an LCD monitor up next to it. Boy did it look washed out and bleary!

thats interesting. I recently did a similar test with an lcd and a crt
montor. lcd had horrendous colour bleeding and extremely poor black
background.Until i actually put them side by side I thought the lcd was
alright.
-B

David Nebenzahl wrote:
Meat Plow spake thus:
So what, pray tell, is a "G-2" range? Don't worry; I know all about
resistors, and high voltages, and shocks, and all that. No need to
nanny-state me with all the dire warnings.

So you know all about CRT devices but don't know about the CRT's g2 grid?
The warnings are for your saftey and the potential saftey of others
reading these threads.

No, I had never heard that term before. I do know about CRTs (not *all*
about them, obviously), but I'm not in the TV repair business and don't
know all the jargon. So sue me.

By the way, I did look up "G2" on Google, and discovered that it seems
to indicate a grid (2nd grid, I'm assuming) on vacuum tubes in general,
not just CRTs; found references to 6550s and such.

But I do know all about high voltages, and know enough to be damn
careful with the innards of any TV set or monitor. The two aren't
mutually exclusive, you know, so you can lay off your warnings, as
well-intentioned as they may be.

this thread is starting to sound like deja vu-....
see
:http://groups.google.com/group/sci.e...02d1d9681a4d1e


from post number 24 on.

-B,

b spake thus:

David Nebenzahl wrote:

Meat Plow spake thus:

So what, pray tell, is a "G-2" range? Don't worry; I know all about
resistors, and high voltages, and shocks, and all that. No need to
nanny-state me with all the dire warnings.

So you know all about CRT devices but don't know about the CRT's g2 grid?
The warnings are for your saftey and the potential saftey of others
reading these threads.

No, I had never heard that term before. I do know about CRTs (not *all*
about them, obviously), but I'm not in the TV repair business and don't
know all the jargon. So sue me.

By the way, I did look up "G2" on Google, and discovered that it seems
to indicate a grid (2nd grid, I'm assuming) on vacuum tubes in general,
not just CRTs; found references to 6550s and such.

But I do know all about high voltages, and know enough to be damn
careful with the innards of any TV set or monitor. The two aren't
mutually exclusive, you know, so you can lay off your warnings, as
well-intentioned as they may be.

this thread is starting to sound like deja vu-....
see
:http://groups.google.com/group/sci.e...02d1d9681a4d1e

from post number 24 on.

This is really, really annoying.

What are you, the HV police? A new extension of the nanny state, here to
tell us to behave like good children and never, ever touch the insides
of a TV until we've gotten our PhD in Electronical Fixin' Stuff?

Fergodsakes; OK, I know there are bozos out there who don't know about
this stuff. I DO. I do know that capacitors (and even picture tubes
*acting* as capacitors) can store lethal charges. I know it's very easy
to get zapped mucking around in the innards of a TV or monitor. OK? Got
it? So lay off.

By the way, all of this is completely unnecessary, as you'd know if you
read my post above where I explained that I was able to fix this by
using one of the built-in OSD functions. Monitor looks just peachy now,
thank you very much.

(I'd still like to know just what that function does, but I don't ever
expect to get that information here.)


--
Just as McDonald's is where you go when you're hungry but don't really
care about the quality of your food, Wikipedia is where you go when
you're curious but don't really care about the quality of your knowledge.

- Matthew White's WikiWatch (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm)

David Nebenzahl wrote:


(I'd still like to know just what that function does, but I don't ever
expect to get that information here.)


David,

Historically, CRT monitors used to have separate red, green and blue
intensity adjustments to cope with the fact that the separate guns age
at different rates. The potentiometers for making these adjustments
were sometimes made accessible without removing the case, sometimes
not. In any case a large busy IT department might well decide that a
monitor with degraded color balance was due for replacement, as it was
not considered cost-effective to do the adjustments manually.

More recent models had a microprocessor to handle control and setup,
and some Sony Trinitron monitors, including Dell badged ones, featured
"digital color return technology" which was intended to enable a return
to original factory-shipped color temperature and luminance if desired
at any point over the lifetime of the monitor.

The operation needs to be performed with the guns warmed up, and I
think you will find that it is locked out for about 10 to 20 minutes
after switch on. During this time an "Available After Warm up" message
is displayed if Color Return is selected using the OSD menu. After this
time use of Color Return is possible.

One way to tell if a Trinitron monitor had microprocessor control was
to see if Color Return is a menu option.

Obviously, if the tube is too far gone, perfect balance and luminance
will be impossible to restore, but even with quite old kit, 7 to 10
years, people report acceptable results after using this feature.

I have heard stories of people who know about this retrieving Trinitron
monitors from dumpsters because university or business IT departments
have replaced them for being "too red" (or blue or green) because they
were not aware of the Color return feature.

I see you have not shown an accessible email address, so you'll only
find this information if you come back here.

spake thus:

I see you have not shown an accessible email address, so you'll only
find this information if you come back here.

I "wear a condom" when posting to Usenet (ergo no spam whatsoever in my
real email inbox). But thanks for posting this information.


--
Just as McDonald's is where you go when you're hungry but don't really
care about the quality of your food, Wikipedia is where you go when
you're curious but don't really care about the quality of your knowledge.

- Matthew White's WikiWatch (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm)

Meat Plow spake thus:

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:03:42 -0800, David Nebenzahl Has Frothed:

spake thus:

I see you have not shown an accessible email address, so you'll only
find this information if you come back here.

I "wear a condom" when posting to Usenet (ergo no spam whatsoever in my
real email inbox). But thanks for posting this information.

Does your neb at microtech address still work?

Wow, that's a flash from the past. No, that'll definitely bounce!

No, when I need to exchange information off-group, I make discreet
arrangements with other posters. Never reveal a real email address
(well, unless it's a Yahoo throwaway) is my policy, and it works well
for me.


--
Just as McDonald's is where you go when you're hungry but don't really
care about the quality of your food, Wikipedia is where you go when
you're curious but don't really care about the quality of your knowledge.

- Matthew White's WikiWatch (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm)

David Nebenzahl wrote:

No, when I need to exchange information off-group, I make discreet
arrangements with other posters. Never reveal a real email address
(well, unless it's a Yahoo throwaway) is my policy, and it works well
for me.

I've got 97 Gmail invites if you want one.

spake thus:

David Nebenzahl wrote:

No, when I need to exchange information off-group, I make discreet
arrangements with other posters. Never reveal a real email address
(well, unless it's a Yahoo throwaway) is my policy, and it works well
for me.

I've got 97 Gmail invites if you want one.

I wouldn't use Gmail if you *paid* me to. No thanks.


--
Just as McDonald's is where you go when you're hungry but don't really
care about the quality of your food, Wikipedia is where you go when
you're curious but don't really care about the quality of your knowledge.

- Matthew White's WikiWatch (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm)

"David Nebenzahl" wrote in message
s.com...

I wouldn't use Gmail if you *paid* me to. No thanks.

Works fine. I wouldn't use my ISPs email address except to forward to.