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IIfx Suddenly Hates My 20" HP 2010i Monitor

Concorde1993

Well-known member
After successfully installing OS 8.1 using Gamba's instructions on another Quantum hard drive, I decided I missed System 7.1 and promptly reinstalled that HD back into my IIfx. I also decided to revive my 8.24 GC video card, now that the Sony power supply from my IIx has proven to be reliable these past few days.

I was not expecting the 8.24 GC card to work with my 20" HP 2010i monitor, and sure enough nothing was detected. So I reconnected the HP monitor to my High-Res video card, which had been working flawlessly with the HP monitor. Now the HP monitor won't detect the High-Res card. I already removed and reinstalled both batteries in hopes things would return to normal - no such luck. The IIfx boots perfectly fine but now I have no image.

Thoughts? I'll try both video cards with my last remaining 13" Apple CRT monitor. I doubt I shorted anything.
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
Is there a way to reset the monitor? I know one of my newer Samsung LCDs acts up and displays a weird image sometimes when I connect it until I reset it.
 

Concorde1993

Well-known member
Confirming that both the High-Res card and 8.24 GC card work with my 13" Apple monitor. I can't run my After Dark screensavers in anything better than 256 color mode on the 8.24 GC (they black out when the card is set to thousands or millions of colors), but at least its working.

Funny thing is when I reconnected the 7.1 HD, the IIfx defaulted back to 24-bit mode. Had to adjust some memory settings as well, which makes me wonder if 7.5.1 or OS 8.1 may have temporarily screwed something up with the HP monitor.

Going to reconnect it again and see what happens. Resetting the monitor won't do anything (it automatically defaults to 1600x900, then readjusts to 640x480 when it detects the Mac video card).
 

Concorde1993

Well-known member
I suspect the VGA port has failed on my HP monitor. Changed the cable with two other good cables. Won't even connect to my Mac Pro 1,1 and it also worked perfectly with its NVIDIA graphics card (currently have it hooked up to my 22" ADC monitor).

I don't have a DVI male-to-male cable to test out the DVI port, but I'll get one tomorrow to determine if it's just the VGA side that has stopped working.
 

Concorde1993

Well-known member
After wasting my time at Staples and Best Buy (they no longer carry DVI-D cables in-store since they apparently take up too much shelf space and customer service wanted me to wait 1-2 weeks for an online order), I went to Value Village and found two DVI-D cables.

The HP monitor accepted both cables when running on the Mac Pro 1,1 - that is, until I unplugged them, and tested them on the IIfx using a DVI to VGA adapter (neither worked with the High-Res card and the 8.24 GC card). When I went back to the Mac Pro, the monitor gave the "no signal" message and went into sleep mode. Needless to say, I'm done trying to reason with this HP monitor, and it will soon be up for sale on Kijiji or in the trash - I haven't decided yet. It worked for about a year with the IIfx's High-Res card.

Switching to another monitor - My 19" LaCie Electron Blue III. This monitor replaced my Electron Blue IV after it decided to have a fit and blow its horizontal output circuit after 6 years of loyal service. The III has been dormant since I bought it last year. It works fine with my Mac Pro, but the color is absolutely horrible on the IIfx with both video cards - way too much green saturation, which is odd, since I never experienced this problem with the IV. Switching off the monitor's "Fine Picture Mode" helped things considerably, but there is still too much green saturation in the background. Manually reducing the color to 0% Green showed some minor improvement. Has anyone experienced this problem before with a "newer" CRT? I have no color bleed at all with my Apple CRT.
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jeremywork

Well-known member
Pic #1.jpg
Before my GDM-FW900 lost its flyback I remember it starting up looking like this when it hadn't been plugged in for a while. After warming up for about half an hour an additional option would appear in the OSD to auto-calibrate, which would bring the black levels back to looking beautiful. I wonder if the Electron Blue III has a similar feature.
 

jeremywork

Well-known member
I don’t have any LaCie displays, but this thread seems relevant:


Exerpt:
On my 22" its an option called constant brightness in the first screen on the user menu, just after Degauss. If you select that option then it should flash through 3 test screens, red, green and blue and then compensate for any lost brightness on each color and save to eeprom.

karmeck wrote:
Here is an image of the smpte colorbar from 240p test suite (720p@60hz)
SPOILER: SHOW

After looking at it. Looks kinda fine. This is at 8300k

How do I enter service mode?

Looks a bit dark to me. you should have 3 different shades of black in the bottom right corner as far as I'm aware.

To get the service menu up for the Electron blueII you have to:

(1) Turn power on while holding down the CONNECTOR SELECT button
(2) After step (1), release the button after one to two seconds.
(3) Confirm that 00 is displayed for the counter on the OSD display, and set to 255 with the (-) ADJUST button.
(4) set to 05 with the (+) ADJUST button.
(5) When the adjustment item select button {RIGHT side} is pressed, the factory mode will be entered.

The method may be different for yor Electron blueI though.
 
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