sean@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Sean Sterling Foiles) (04/25/91)
OK, here's the story so far: Occasionally my ST Color Monitor SC1224 fills up with vericle lines along the left side of every other character column. In lo rez that means 20 verticle lines, in med rez it's 40. But this only occurs in text areas. If I boot from my hard drive using ICD's host adapter, the screen's starts out ok but once the GEM desktop appears so do the annoying lines. Then my desktop picture arrives covering up the lines. The picture looks fine except for some traces of the lines on the picture's extream borders. Then when the drive windows open up, the verticle lines are back, but now only on the inside of the drive boxes. At first I thought it might be anything from loose connections, to my monitor master (although I am currently sans Monochrome - got one to sell?), to a hard drive virus (yeeeks!). So I turned everything off for 5+ minutes, disconnected my hard drive, connected the Color monitor directly into my Mega4, and booted with a virus free disk. Sure enough, the same problem. Essentially, where ever text is or can be displayed (including editable text fields) are verticle lines on every other character's left side. This includes the space character. Some times these lines preclude the character entirely and I end up with lines like: | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |l|c| |e|e|t| |o|t|n|e|)| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ( Click here to continue ) It's happened three times in as many days for seemingly random reasons and lasts anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more. The first time I recall this happening was during a large hard disk to hard disk copy. The size was about 4 megs of information, with <300 files and folders. (Yes I have plenty of extra folders allocated (2500) thru ICD's software.) During the middle of copying and updating, the copy window ( `currently copying filename to filename') gets the lines. Another time was on returning to the desktop from an application (application name forgotten). No amout of re-booting, jostling of cables, or praying to local deities helps what so-ever. Any clues? Thanks in advance. || Sean Sterling Foiles || || sean@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu || || Comp Sci Grad of Univ of Texas ||
schuch@efes.physik.uni-kl.de (Andreas Schuch) (04/29/91)
sean@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Sean Sterling Foiles) writes: >OK, here's the story so far: > >Occasionally my ST Color Monitor SC1224 fills up with vericle lines along >the left side of every other character column. In lo rez that means 20 >verticle lines, in med rez it's 40. >... I have similiar problems with my ST 520+ (TOS 1.4, but also with 1.0) and mono monitor SM124 with any configuration of auto-prgs or accs. From time to time 8 black vertical black stripes appear on the screen hiding parts of the display. The stripes go from top to bottom. Each stripe has a width of 2 characters (16 pixels), the space between is 8 chars, the first stripe is after 6 (sometimes after 2 chars) and the last one is at the right border of the screen. The missing chars of the right border appear at the left border of the screen with one pixel shifted vertically down. Quite strange, isn't it? For example This is at the left border .... This is at the right border displays like: || || || || || || erThis i||at the l||t border||... Thi||is at th||right bo|| || || || || || || This effect occasionally comes out when: - starting or finishing TEMPUS, - ViewGIF displays a picture, - SysMon is invoked, - tracing over certain TRAPs with MonST debugger (couldn't find out which in special). I have never seen these stripes when connecting my TV as color monitor to my ST, but I don't use color mode often. Normally only rebooting helps to get rid of the stripes. Sometimes the responsible programs restore a stripped screen again, but in this case, sometimes the chars from right remain at the left side. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) (04/30/91)
sean@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Sean Sterling Foiles) writes: >Occasionally my ST Color Monitor SC1224 fills up with vericle lines along >the left side of every other character column. In lo rez that means 20 >verticle lines, in med rez it's 40. That's "vertical," not "verticle." Take your machine to a dealer. There's something wrong inside. A dealer should be able to diagnose, attempt a fix, and ultimately repair or replace the motherboard. If the machine is out of warranty he will probably want to charge you something. Let him. ============================================ Opinions expressed above do not necessarily -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp. reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. ...ames!atari!apratt
ytsuji@wucc.waseda.ac.jp (Y.Tsuji) (04/30/91)
Andreas Schuch says his screen goes funny when > - starting or finishing TEMPUS, > - ViewGIF displays a picture, > - SysMon is invoked, > - tracing over certain TRAPs with MonST debugger (couldn't find out > which in special). (deleted) Aha! The monitor seems OK. It looks like a problem of poorly written software that don't look after other interrupt handlers well. To test whether the problem comes from the screen memory or the monitor, read the address of the funny picture while it is shown on the screen. You may need a pocket calculator to work out where because TOS tells us only of the base of the screen memory. One thing I do often is to use the 'pokew' command of GULAAM. Your debugger should be more versatile. If the source of the trouble is suspected to bugs of the software, you can ask the bug fix from the vendor. Hope this might fix the problem. P.S. The easiest way to detect the problem is to do the same thing on someone else's monitor or machine.
whoffman@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Walt Hoffman) (05/01/91)
In article <1991Apr29.163055.7126@rhrk.uni-kl.de> schuch@efes.physik.uni-kl.de (Andreas Schuch) writes: > > This is at the left border .... This is at the right border > >displays like: > > || || || || || || > erThis i||at the l||t border||... Thi||is at th||right bo|| > || || || || || || > >Any suggestions? >Thanks in advance. I, too, had this exact same problem. It seemed to alter the display memory because when I did a screen print it also had the lines and image shifting. I never did get a good feeling for what the cause was but found that lightly dropping the computer aggravated the symptom. I opened my computer and found nothing dramatic but pushed the chips back into their sockets and repackaged the computer. I haven't seen the problem repeat yet. The quad sockets used in the ST are pretty cheap quality and I wouldnt be surprised if they were indeed the problem. Just thought I could add my $.02 in. -- Walt Hoffman -- Jet Propulsion Laboratory whoffman@jato.jpl.nasa.gov or elroy!jato!whoffman@csvax.caltech.edu Galileo Orbiter Engineering Team -- Real-Time Analyst "Jupiter...it's not just a destination, it's an adventure."