[vox-tech] Acer AL2216W (blank screen)

[Richard Harke]

In recent years I have noticed that video cards die distressingly soon.
Often with
strange symptoms that make it appear to be something more basic. I do have
to admit
that the most recen time (about two weeks ago) it was in fact the monitor.
That was an
HP 22" LCD monitor only 5 years old. My previous monitor was a Sony CRT that
went back
to the early 90's.

I can only suugest that you try swapping out starting with whatever you can
do cheaply.
Especially if you can borrow a component for testing.

I do have an extra video card but I'm not in Davis so you'd have to wait
till
the regular Lugod meeting.

Richard


On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 5:13 PM, Thomas Johnston <trjohnston at ucdavis.edu>wrote:

> I am running Kubuntu 10.04 (64 bit) on my Dell Vostro 1500 and using
> an Acer AL2216W as a second monitor. Everything was working great
> until last Monday morning. I powered up the computer, activated the
> external monitor and the max resolution was 1280x1024 (the native
> resolution is 1680x1050 - same as my laptop display). I didn't do
> anything to modify any video settings so I don't know exactly what
> prompted the change; however, there were about 10 "bug fixes" the day
> before. Looking at the history of fixes I don't see anything that
> looks likely to cause a problem, but I am certainly not a Linux
> expert.
>
> Anyway, I have spent the last 4 days doing everything I can to make it
> work again: updated drivers, uninstalled/reinstalled drivers, deleting
> the xorg.conf file and having one auto generated, manually editing the
> xorg.conf .... nothing has worked. In fact, the situation is now
> worse. I can't even get the monitor to display anything anymore - just
> a black screen. I think the monitor itself is fine, if I turn it on I
> see the "ACER" logo appear, then I briefly see a dialog box that says
> "no signal", and then it goes blank. I don't have a great
> understanding of the xorg.conf file, but I was very careful when
> editing it. I read all of the NVIDIA documentation online and I found
> examples of xorg.conf files online from people with this same monitor
> who claimed to have it working, so I don't think I used a refresh/sync
> rate beyond what the monitor is capable of (I didn't smell any
> smoke!).  My Google searches have indicated that many people have had
> problems reading EDID data from this monitor. I have even plugged it
> into a Windows machine with an ATI graphics card and same
> thing...blank screen.
>
> I checked the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file and I see this warning:
> (WW) Sep 16 15:07:43 NVIDIA(GPU-0): Unable to read EDID for display device
> CRT-0
>
> there are no errors (EE) generated.
>
> Other system details in case it is relevant:
> The monitor is connected to my graphics card via the VGA port (my
> laptop doesn't have any other display ports; however the monitor does
> have a DVI-D connection)
> NVIDIA Driver Version: 256.53
> Server Version: 1.7.6
> NV-CONTROL Version: 1.23
> Graphics Card: GeForce 8600M GT
>
>
> My question is: do you think the monitor is toast or would work again
> if I could get a working EDID.bin and/or xorg.conf file (perhaps from
> kind soul on the interwebs)?
>
>
> thanks in advance,
>
> Thomas
> _______________________________________________
> vox-tech mailing list
> vox-tech at lists.lugod.org
> http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.lugod.org/pipermail/vox-tech/attachments/20100916/910897cd/attachment.htm