monitor resolution issues

[typeturbosh]

my mac monitor desided it will only display in 480x640...i was running it at 1600x1200...is there something wrong with the screen, or is it in my system software? what can i do i don;t have any money to buy a new monitor. i am running a dual 500 g4 with a rage 128 pro and a rage 128 i have a kleer 17" monitor that is very fuzzy and an older mac display, the one with the sony trinitron technolgy. i tried switching cards and booting with only one installed, etc. no use. the system preferences does not even reconize the monitor as what it is, it just says generic display. thanks

 

[jmgalvin]

You didn't say what version of the OS you're using, but if you downloaded an upgrade from Apple, that could cause the problem. I've read that some of the video cards don't play well with some updates and the makers don't have updates yet.

While I did not have the problem you list when I installed the 10.3.8 update, it did wreck MS, Office & Acrobat Pro - requiring a reinstall of those apps. It also made building the desktop on a cold start much slower.

If you're using osx, you might try reinstalling your original system via "archive and install". I'm not wuite sure that this will solve your problem since I'm not sure how that option preserves your various settings - like monitor. If it doesn't help, I would suggest backing up and using the straight install.

If you're using OS 9 or earlier, do a "clean install". That will replace your monitor settings, while maintaining everything else in
Previous Systems" folder.

Since you played with the cards, you might make sure that your machine is properly reading the card by looking at System Profiler.

 

[typeturbosh]

i checked system profiler, it shows the proper cards. i swapped the monitors, so now my "better" monitor is running on my agp card, which is th eone my apple monitor was ghooked up tot when it "went bad". i guess what ever is imbedded into the monitor has gotten corrupted so it will not read any size except 480x640. i wonder if monitors have firmware...if some can confire this and possibly show me where to find updates this may solve my problem. other wise i may pull ther electronics out of my not so good monitor and put them into one with the better tube. btw the problem didnt start right after i updated...sorry about not saying what system im using...10.3.8

 

[jmgalvin]

You might try opening System Prefs/Displays and click on Detect while the bad monitor in connected and on. If nothing happen close the Display prefs window and reopen it to see if you've got more choices now.

If you have Classic installed and you can boot into 9, try that and see if you can change the monitor setting there. If yes, its an osx problem.

I use an Apple 21 inch studio display that has all sorts of settings, If it's not on before I boot the system, I lose some of its usefulness.

One last thing. You could try repairing permissions via Disk utility. Sometimes, when you install some applications they mess around with various things not directly related to them. If you log in to X as other than administrator, you could also check to make sure you didn't accidentally lock yourself out of some things. Your truly has done that in the past and got all ticked off at Apple, when I screwed things up all by myself.

 

[typeturbosh]

i found something on the apple website...its an os 9 problem. i had booted into 9 and when i rebooted into x is when the issue occured. but i kind of fixed it. i had to deleate the monitor settings from os 9, clear p ram, and reboot into 9, then reboot into x. i have all my resolution settings except 1600x1200, which is th eone i was using. but what i have now is better than 640x480. thanks. im going to try what u said and see if i can get my 1600x1200 back.

 

[jmgalvin]

I find that running Classic under OSX works just fine. I never boot into 9.
I bought my G4 specifically because it would boot 9 and found that the classic enviroment works just as well.

On thing you could consider is trashing 9s Monitors preferences after you get the thing into X and reboot to see what happens.

 

[typeturbosh]

yeah i needed to boot into os9 to validate an older version of final cut pro. you can;t do it in classic. normally i dont boot into 9 under neccesary.