Having trouble with my old 2140 -L61, hoping its not terminal.
Not very often I get baffled, but this ones got me.
I gave my old, heavily upgraded 2140 to my daughter a couple years back,
and has been doing fine until now.
A few weeks back, the color suddenly seemed to drain from the monitor.
Not black and white, but just a blueish/greenish tint to everything.
I first looked in the settings, it was set 32 bit high color.
I uninstalled the drivers for the video card [a 64 mb SIS], reinstalled, no
joy.
That was really all I could think to do, I assumed the old MM75 monitor had
finally bought the farm.
After all, it has probably been used 1,000's of hours since 1997.
I got her a new 17 inch LCD today, sure that the colors would come blazing
back.
I was wrong - Same exact nasty looking greenish/blue tone.
So now I thought crap, its the video card. Soooo, after much ado, I finally
got the old rage pro fired up and the monitor posted from the stock ATI
monitor output ... And same thing, wouldn't you know.
So its not the monitors.
Doesn't appear to be the video card.
No adjustments I can think of could even make a screen look this way unless
you tried real real hard.
I was messing with the new monitors color settings, which you can vary,
among other things, the red/green/blue saturation amounts.
I noticed that playing with the slider of the red, it makes no difference
from 0 to 100, while green and blue do.
So apparently, herin lies the problem.
Considering that I used two different monitors, two different video
outputs, and two different monitor cables ... How could the machine itself
be screwing me on the red ?
The one possible thing I can think of, and this should be easy enough to
check out if someone has a [known good] monitor cable handy, is both the
cables [computer end] have a pin missing, in the second row.
I assumed this is as should be, since both the MM75 cable and the new one I
got have that same pin missing.
Its possible though that the MM75 cable had a pin break off in the video
card, and when I plugged the new one in, this broke off the same pin.
That is the single possibility that I can think of.
If it turns out that pin is simply not supposed to be there on any cable,
then there goes that theory.
I should check the computer end, but I'm too lazy to do that right now
after wrestling with this old beast for a couple hours.

Well thats it.
Any ideas would be appreciated.

I checked two of my system's monitor cables. My Aptiva 2153 with an
Envision monitor has 5-4-5 pins in the three rows. The row with four
has three pins, an open spot, and then another pin. There is no
evidence of a broken pin in that row. My Dell with a Dell monitor, has
three rows of five pins. Not sure if that helps any.

Mike

MinnesotaMike <nospam (AT) charter (DOT) net> wrote in news:K2LNg.93$HA5.41
@newsfe05.lga:

I went to a couple electronic stores today best buy ect to look at their
cables.
Best buy had a grand total of 1 to chose from - I really wasn't there to
buy, just look.
Their $19.99 offering for a 6 ft VGA cable had all 15 pins.
Thought I might be on to something, but looking at the cables at circuit
city, theirs had that one pin missing, like ours.

The missing pin is either 7 or 9, and looking here
http://www.montest.com/technote.html , it seems it is either simply a
ground, or NC, which I presume is No Connection.
Looks like this pin is the VGA equivelent of an apendix.

So my problem remains, and I am mystified as hell.

Googled up "no red on monitor" or some such, and loads of people have had
this problem, and most of the advice given is that this is almost always
either a monitor or cable problem ... It is not the brand new LCD monitor,
this I know because it shows vivid red in its menu, so I suppose I'll try
another cable on the off chance that I may be dealing with 2 bad cables -
The stock one on the MM75, and the one I scavenged from my garage.

My computer is networked with my daughters, and I have this program which
lets me see whatever is on her screen in real time [and yes, she'd have a
holy fit if she knew. I try not to use it too often].
Anyways, her screen, which look dingy green looking at it, shows up just
fine,reds and all, on my monitor through this program, so I have no idea
WTH is going on here ... Because if it was some sort of internal problem
with the aptiva, I don't see how the screen would look normal to me on my
computer.

Have you tried using the cable off your system? You could also put the
Aptiva's cable on your's to see if you get the same results. That would
at least be cheaper then buying a new cable right now.

By the way, I curious as to what program you use to see what your
daughter is viewing. Can they tell if you're watching? With three
kids, that might be handy for me.

Mike

MinnesotaMike <nospam (AT) charter (DOT) net> wrote in news:QzSNg.206$kI5.74
@newsfe07.lga:

I use a DVI cable on mine, not VGA.

Well, I lugged that monster MM75 out to the garage, and the thought of
lugging it all the way back upstairs to my computer is not appealing.
I have thought of that, and am hanging on to excuses not to do it.
My guess is it would work fine, but one never knows for sure until they
try.

I think I'll just buy one, and if it doesn't do the trick, just return it.
I know I have other cables somewhere in the house/garage, so don't really
need yet another one.

Advanced net monitor for classroom http://www.eduiq.com/netmonpro.htm I
found it on the usenet, but liked it so much I up and paid for it, which I
tend to do with apps I get use out of.

They in no way, shape or form can tell, unless they happen to walk in on
you viewing their screen.
It also lets you cut off their internet access if you wish with the push of
a button, and send messages .. But of course that may tip them off that
they are being monitored.
You install the app on yours, then install a seperate, but related, app on
theirs, and presto, their screen is now visible to you.
The app on theirs does not run in the system tray [good for computer savvy
suspicous kids], and is not otherwise visibly running.
The one essential thing is that the computers are networked.

I do feel slightly guilty using it ... Its hard to avoid the feeling of
being somewhat of a nosy peeping tom using this, but with kids and
computers, its far better to be nosy and informed, than sorry.

Thanks for the program info. Like you said, it's better to be safe.

"T-bone" <mis (AT) take (DOT) net> wrote in
news:Xns983CB9D5CBB1ewrfdgrstnetaakeanfk (AT) 140 (DOT) 99.99.130:

It was the dang cable.
Got a new one from Office max for $10, and it worked.
Ran into a whole slew of new problems though.
The old ATI rage pro driver I installed played havoc, and did not want to
leave or sit inactive.
The color, such as it was, looked very washed out and weak no matter what I
did.
Went through many boots and reboots, safe mode visits, unistalling this and
reinstalling that, BIOS adjustments and finally got it right.
But as usual, through a combination of tinkering and luck, I prevailed, and
the new monitor looks great.

I looked closely at the pins on the old MM75 monitor, and indeed one was
bent almost flat - I do not know what caused this in the first place, as
the monitor seemed to go from good color as usual to no red over night, but
that was it.
I'm not sure either why the cable I dug up out of my garage didn't work,
but I'm not going to question success.
This aptiva has probably taught me more about the workings of computers
than a friggin college course could ever do.

Good to hear that you got things back to normal!