First post, by Scythifuge
- Rank
- Oldbie
Greetings,
I had found a brand new KDS monitor, sealed in it's original box, for not cheap. I had been using it to build a couple of retro machines. I was using the Windows 98 Auto Patcher, and after the first reboot, the monitor reset itself with the degauss sound happening, and then the picture looked very strange. It looked distorted like how a screen may look while installing display drivers, when the picture gets weird in the middle of the process. After the auto patcher was completed, it became clear that something "permanent" happened to the monitor. The machine has a Voodoo 5 and is completely set up (I did try a different video card to make sure my Voodoo was fine.) I connected a spare monitor and it seems fine. I then connected the KDS to my laptop's VGA port and was seeing the same problems, though I did set different refresh rates to see if it changed. The picture was almost black and heavily distorted.
Strangely, the monitor started letting me see the picture a little better, and I can get into windows. The problem is that the display is off during the boot process; looks semi-normal if I go into safe mode, and has a heavy pincushion effect if I go into normal windows. Some of the picture adjustments seem to work, but not completely (vertical is always too long, no matter what,) and the the picture looks like the pincushion setting was set all the way in, and no matter what, the pincushion adjustment does nothing to effect the picture.
It seems like whatever controls how the picture is "drawn on the screen" went bad, and the higher the color depth and resolution, the more distorted the picture.
I NEED to save this monitor. I have been putting months into these projects. I know that even though the monitor was never used, the caps may be faulty from sitting. I am open to trying ANYTHING to get this monitor working again. It could take a long time and a lot of money to find another 19" CRT that is NOS or in very good condition.
Many thanks,
Scythifuge