Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!falstaff.mae.cwru.edu!jb From: jb@falstaff.mae.cwru.edu (Jim Berilla) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware Subject: Re: Video 7 Requires Reset to operate Summary: I KNOW THIS PROBLEM, HERE'S PROBABLE SOLUTION! Keywords: vga Message-ID: <1990Dec27.182847.1451@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> Date: 27 Dec 90 18:28:47 GMT References: <15395@ogicse.ogi.edu> Sender: news@usenet.ins.cwru.edu Distribution: comp Organization: Case Western Reserve University Lines: 62 Nntp-Posting-Host: falstaff.mae.cwru.edu In article <15395@ogicse.ogi.edu> buchholz@ese3.ogi.edu (Don Buchholz) writes: > [a lot of stuff deleted] >summarizing the thread so far: > >Our problems/symptoms are: > 1. The video card will "boot" in it's "monochrome-mode" if the monitor isn't > warmed up. > > 2. The monitor will exhibit other strange behavior. Sometimes the palette > will shift colors. Most of the time the "white" text is actually a > reddish/purple-white. Today I experienced the "flashback" of having > (in Procomm) all my white text go yellow, my status line change to red, > and the background go from blue to black. > > 3. Every once in a blue moon (it happens for about 30 seconds once every > two months -- try explaining that to a service tech!), the whole screen > will get very fuzzy, the monitor will make sounds like a Van de Graf > generator, and then suddenly there will be a loud *SNAP* and everything > will fade back to (purplish) normal. I fixed a few of these problems not too long ago. Sorry for not posting sooner, but it took me a while to realize that this is the same problem that I had. It's not the video card. It's the monitor. My system is running a Paradise video card and it had the exact same problem as in 1 and 2 above. Can't help with #3, though. I hope this is the same with the Video-7 as it is with the Paradise. In the Zenith monitor, the cable with the RGB signals goes to a connector on the video board. The connector is crummy and doesn't make good contact. The video signals are terminated on the video card with 75 ohm resistors. As the contact resistance of the connector changes, it causes the video signal at the board to change, causing the characters to flicker and change colors. In my case, the red signal connector had about 30 ohms of resistance. The paradise card detects a monichrome monitor by the fact that the red video signal isn't terminated. (monochrome monitors use only the green video.) So, the 30 ohm resistance of the connector plus the 75 ohm termination was high enough that the card thought that the video signal wasn't terminated, and started up in monochrome mode. I tried resetting the color pallet, but it still wouldn't let me disable gray-scale summing. My solution was to take apart the connector and squeeze the contacts on the connector together to make better contact. It took a few times before I got them squeezed enough to be reliable. I got very close to ripping out the connector and soldering in the cable. I also took my monitor to zenith for repair. To make a long story short, they kept it for 2 months, and it came back worse that it was originally. More later, j. -- Jim Berilla / jb@falstaff.cwru.edu / 216-368-6776 "My opinions are my own, except on Wednesday mornings at 9 AM, when my opinions are those of my boss."