Rolling Screen Effect with Sony Trinitron 200SX On Windows 98.
Posted by localredditposter@reddit | retrobattlestations | View on Reddit | 7 comments
I'm getting really frustrated, just made a fresh install of 98 on my OptiPlex 4100 and am having trouble with this overlapping and rolling screen effect on my crt. I know the crt isn't the problem because I've tested it on my xp build. At first I thought maybe it was a bad graphics card so I switched out the original Geforce 2 with a MX 440, Same symptoms. Then I tested it with a slightly newer 4:3 LCD monitor and it worked fine.
Sirotaca@reddit
Can you post a video of what it's doing? Sounds like missing/out-of-range sync.
localredditposter@reddit (OP)
https://imgur.com/a/mWEG16F
Sirotaca@reddit
Yeah, that's a vertical hold issue. Double check the refresh rate and make sure it's in range for that monitor. If it is... bad cap in the monitor's vertical deflection circuit?
localredditposter@reddit (OP)
It's definetly in range, but how could it be the monitors fault? I already said I've hooked it up to other computers no issue
Sirotaca@reddit
Are you positive the other computers are using the exact same modeline?
There are really only three possibilities here:
Monitor's broke
Graphics card's broke
Graphics mode is out of range
You claim it's not #3, so let's go with that assumption. #2 is possible, but you say you've tested multiple cards, which makes that much less likely to be the case. Given that, my money's on #1.
There's a lot of analog voodoo happening in CRTs, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of some part of the vertical deflection being marginal to the point that it's only losing vertical hold with certain sync rates or polarities. Also, we know that the graphics card is outputting a valid vertical sync signal in DOS text mode at least; seems unlikely that changing modes would cause the (digital) sync pulses to go from being in spec to being out of spec, especially given that it worked with the LCD monitor.
Additionally, late '90s CRT monitors like that one typically have some sort of protection against out-of-range sync rates, so the fact that it's displaying anything at all suggests to me that the monitor at least thinks it's receiving an in-range mode, yet it's still losing vertical hold on it.
But perhaps the fact that the proper drivers aren't installed is causing the graphics mode to be misconfigured, in which case we're back to #3. You really need to figure out exactly what mode the graphics card is outputting.
localredditposter@reddit (OP)
I’m really out of ideas besides loading up the proper drivers, Ill order some CDRW discs and get back to you.
localredditposter@reddit (OP)
I'll send a video in a bit, but my output settings are limited right now because I'm using the built in generic drivers. Running 480p at 70ish I think? Whats odd is when I boot into the command prompt the screen is normal, but even in the bios it still looks broken.