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Bizarre Gateway Vivitron 1776 Sync Issue (Only some video modes)

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First post, by thepirategamerboy12

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Hi, yesterday this monitor (a rebranded Sony Trinitron) I've had for close to 3 years now has developed a very odd issue. I was using it with my Tandy 1000 RL with a Trident ISA VGA card in it and all was well, I often use the stand by function on it when I go away from the computer for a bit but when I pressed it again to turn the display back on the video was crazy out of sync and after a few seconds it shut itself off. I turned the monitor on again and it was displaying fine once again so I thought my issues were over, however...

I hooked up my Pentium MMX 233 machine with an S3 Trio 64 + Voodoo 1 card in it to the monitor and for some bizarre reason the monitor will no longer sync to certain resolution/refresh rate combinations that it used to do totally fine before. As an example, 640x480 60hz works but 70hz is totally out of sync. 800x600 I can't get to display in sync at all no matter what refresh rate I choose. 1024x768 will not display in sync at 60hz but 70-75 do work. You get the picture.

The issue is the not the video card(s) in the MMX, I also tried it on my HP Vectra 486 PC with built-in Cirrus Logic graphics and 640x480 messes up by default and I have to set it to "low refresh rate" in the BIOS to get it to display correctly, it used to work fine at the default high refresh mode. My PC-98 still displays okay though which that thing runs at 640x400 24khz/56hz iirc.

Does anyone have a clue on what caused this and is there anything I can do to remedy this? I doubt it but it's worth asking. Thanks, all replies just so you know are very much appreciated.

Here's a short video demonstrating the problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3CAbRYGwmU

Reply 1 of 6, by dominusprog

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Check the cable to see if both horizontal and vertical wires have a good connection.

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A-Trend ATC-1020 V1.1 ❇ Cyrix 6x86 150+ @ 120MHz ❇ 32MiB EDO RAM (8MiBx4) ❇ A-Trend S3 Trio64V2 2MiB
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Reply 2 of 6, by thepirategamerboy12

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dominusprog wrote on 2025-06-27, 06:09:

Check the cable to see if both horizontal and vertical wires have a good connection.

Forgot to mention that I did swap the VGA cable (it is detachable on this monitor) and that did not fix it sadly.

Reply 3 of 6, by dominusprog

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thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2025-06-27, 07:07:
dominusprog wrote on 2025-06-27, 06:09:

Check the cable to see if both horizontal and vertical wires have a good connection.

Forgot to mention that I did swap the VGA cable (it is detachable on this monitor) and that did not fix it sadly.

Okay, but what about the female socket itself?

Duke_2600.png
A-Trend ATC-1020 V1.1 ❇ Cyrix 6x86 150+ @ 120MHz ❇ 32MiB EDO RAM (8MiBx4) ❇ A-Trend S3 Trio64V2 2MiB
Creative AWE64 Value ❇ 8.4GiB Quantum Fireball ❇ Win95 OSR2 Plus!

Reply 4 of 6, by thepirategamerboy12

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dominusprog wrote on 2025-06-27, 08:12:
thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2025-06-27, 07:07:
dominusprog wrote on 2025-06-27, 06:09:

Check the cable to see if both horizontal and vertical wires have a good connection.

Forgot to mention that I did swap the VGA cable (it is detachable on this monitor) and that did not fix it sadly.

Okay, but what about the female socket itself?

It seems fine as far as I can tell, connection is really solid, can't even really wiggle it at all. I know there's a thing you can do with these monitors called Sony DAS/WinDAS. This monitor has a DIN connector on the back I believe for that, really don't know much about it yet though. I wonder if that could potentially help.

Reply 5 of 6, by dominusprog

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You have to open the monitor for further investigations. But if you don't have the knowledge or will to do so, give it to someone who can.

Duke_2600.png
A-Trend ATC-1020 V1.1 ❇ Cyrix 6x86 150+ @ 120MHz ❇ 32MiB EDO RAM (8MiBx4) ❇ A-Trend S3 Trio64V2 2MiB
Creative AWE64 Value ❇ 8.4GiB Quantum Fireball ❇ Win95 OSR2 Plus!

Reply 6 of 6, by thepirategamerboy12

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dominusprog wrote on 2025-06-27, 23:11:

You have to open the monitor for further investigations. But if you don't have the knowledge or will to do so, give it to someone who can.

I may take off the cover but that's really as far as I'm willing to go with opening up the monitor. Probably could use a dusting anyway tbh, maybe I'll look into seeing how the DAS software works more and perhaps that could help it. It's just like, I know this is old tech that dies of course but you'd think if it were truly dead that the display would be messed up all the time regardless of video mode.

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