Monitor screwness

[dhalsiim]

Hi ..
I have this problem with my (2nd hand) monitor. There is no specific timing for when this happens (not that I have noted). I can't explain it much in words, it's like the monitor is screwed . You know, I start seeing strange vertical lines which increase in number if I keep moving my mouse or any windows around.

The colors change, i start seeing redness everywhere, nothing on the screen is readable or viewable. I don't know if this is something new but I was wondering if someone could tell me why this happens. I know it's not because of my video card because I tested with 3 different cards. Is it fixable or should I go out and buy a new one

Thanks

[NeddySeagoon]

dhalsiim,

I'm not convinced its your monitor yet.
When this happens next chnage to a text console (Ctrl-Alt-F2 will do) if the picture is OK, log in and do some console things e.g. list stuff (ls) until the screen scrolls. Is it still dud?

Go back to X with Ctrl-Alt-F7 Has that cleared the mess?
Try different resultions (you may need to set some up) with ctrl-Alt-+ (+ on the numeric pad).

Also try different drivers. vesa and vga will work with any hardware.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[dhalsiim]

Cool let it happen again and I'll try that. I never tried going directly into console while still being into X and doing some stuff (ls'ing etc). But I usually logout of X completely and then from console "shutdown -r now" to restart and things come back to normal.

I just switched to "vesa" from 'radeon' Let's see what happens.

Thank you for your response.

[dhalsiim]

http://experts.about.com/q/2115/3279931.htm

*Cries in a dark corner*

I just got the same thing again and switching back to console and filling the screen didn't help . And now I can reproduce this error every minute, by playing CS in wine. Everytime a run a graphics intensive program this happens. Photoshop, Gimp, CS, Gunbound everything removing the monitor cable doesn't work.

I can't afford a new monitor right now. And this is a bad experience I've had with 2nd hand monitors .

Sigh, thank you for replying to my initial post.
--dhalsiim

[NeddySeagoon]

dhalsiim,

I'm still not convinced its your monitor. Your original post implied some memory of past events. e.g. it gets worse as you move the mouse. The monitor cannot supply that.

I assume you have an AGP video card and as a gamer, you have that hardware tweaked until the pips squeek?

Turn off Side Band Addressing and Fast Writes, both of these features can expose hardware problems if you have them. It good that you can reproduce it - it makes the investigation easier. Another thing to try is turning off AGPGART in the kernel, if you use it.

You should only change one thing at a time or you won't know what affects/fixes it for sure.

Since changing to the VESA driver didn't help, that puts the driver in the clear(er).
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[dhalsiim]

Alright, it's good to have some motivation . I'll disable agpgart completely and build another kernel and use that to try things out.

I will try to do it on 2 different video cards and vesa driver, and try to get it back. I won't be able to run counter strike now though. So I'll just wait till it happens. And about me maxing out my agp card, no actually, the only thing I have is "AGPMode 4" as an option, which gives me around 450 fps in glxgears with agpgart.

Thank you.

[NeddySeagoon]

dhalsiim,

If its easier to investigate, go back to the original setting, play CS to prove its still there. Then unpick video speed ups, one at a time.

If it doesn't happen, you can't investigate it.

What motherboard and video cards have you tried?
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[dhalsiim]

I only have this motherboard and none other. I tried playing CS, it goes slow yeah and I still get the monitor screwness >_<". I have tried using an nvidia TNT2 and an ATI 7000 card.

I tried using them both with agpgart enabled in the kernel and without it too, using the vesa driver only. And when I used agpgart, I had no other options (speed ups) enabled in my X config for the cards at all.

My motherboard is an Intel D845WN.

Do you have any other ideas?

[blaster999]

In my university we have some old monitors. One of them has the same symptoms (only horizontal lines instead of vertical). Moreover, it happens not only in Linux, but in windoze. So it can be your monitor.
_________________
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---
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https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=1896734#1896734

[dhalsiim]

Well it seems I am having no luck at all with this. Whenever I get the lines on screen I can't make them go away except after doing a restart. I guess I can live with that, interrupting a chat session and pausing a couple of downloads won't hurt much.

I do have a laptop so if I ever have anything "Important" going on I'll use vnc to get into my computer and check it out. Untill I can buy a new monitor (and then maybe a new amd64 too ).

Thank you so much Neddy Seagoon for taking the time to answer, and thanks to you too blaster999, but no thanks to your university ().

--dhalsiim.

[NeddySeagoon]

dhalsiim,

You say you have a laptop?
Try the monitor on that. If it doesn't do it its not the monitor.

I still can't think of a defect mechanism in a monitor that causes vertical lines to accumulate as you move the mouse. That sort of thing requires memory (how many lines were on the screen).
Rubbish is being written into the pixel buffer memory.

I suspect a motherboard issue somewhere, since you can make it happen with several video cards. Can you try a PCI video card?
Anything will do, just to eliminate the AGP slot.

Can you force AGP 2x (your board will do AGP 4x)
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[dhalsiim]

Well I don't have a PCI card, but I'll try with mode 2 for AGP. I never thought of using the laptop! I'll try it out.

[edit 1]: I tried using the monitor with the laptop for like an hour or so, played games, watched videos, graphic pictures (anything that caused my monitor to screw), but nothing at all. I even looked at "Babes of Baywatch" err.. hrm..

Ok and while I was playing it struck me that I used to play Hitman: 3 a lot when I had windows installed, and this sort of thing never happened during game play. Sure it would happen later on at some point but never during game play! (That's windows). On Linux as soon as I fire up wine+counter strike, after 1-2 minutes I get the problem. Is it the driver of the card?

Anyways I'll wait for the problem to appear again, then unplug the cord from the CPU and plug it into the laptop to see if the problem is still there. Then i'll try using AGP 2 as you suggested earlier.
[/edit 1]

[dhalsiim]

So guess who gets to buy a new graphics card, NeddySeagoon?

I got the lines again , plugged the cable into the laptop and booted, clear as crystal. Went back to linux and...... "GOD DAMN LINES again" . My heart is still pounding. I don't know if I'm more happy with buying a new video card or losing this 2 year old one .

Man I kept giving up and you.. you come here (SMOOOCH ).

HAHHAHAHA I don't care if people call me gay, I'm gonna get a new VIDEO CARD

What on earth gave you the idea that "accumulating" lines isn't caused by the monitor but the video card?

PS. I LOVE YOU MAN