Bright rectangualr areas appearing on screen

[Jonathan A.]

Over the past couple of days I have seen a few occasions when a bright
area appears on screen. At the same time, the rest of the screen appears
darker than normal. I didn't think to get a screen shot. I don't know if
it would even work, but I did make a decent approximation of the effect
in the gimp:

http://members.cox.net/daboid/misc/bright_corner.png

I awoke this morning, "woke" the monitor from standby, and there was a
bright patch similar to the image above. It's also happened right before
my eyes as I'm working at the computer.

I'm running a 9800-pro on a Slackware Linux system with X.org 6.8.2. If
I stop X, and restart (which is pretty much the same thing as restarting
Windows, back in the Win9x days when you could do that without a total
reboot), the screen is normal again.

I realize most of the discussion here is related to issues under Windows
but, since it is a Radeon, I'm hoping you folks can reliably confirm or
deny whether this sort of thing is known to happen with dying Radeons,
or at least point me to some information that's relevant.

I'm really at a loss. I haven't been able to find any discussion of such
a thing on the 'Net, and I've certainly never seen it before. Has anyone
heard of Radeon cards developing shuch behavior? The card is only about
a year old... never overclocked, and kept in a well ventilated system.

Any ideas what this is, anyone?

Thanks,
Jonathan


Celestica Radeon 9800-Pro 128MB
X11R6.8.2 (X.org source; home built; optimized for Athlon-XP)
ATI Video Driver fglrx_6_8_0-8.20.8-i386-1
windowmaker-0.92.0

 

[Acid8000]

Over the past couple of days I have seen a few occasions when a bright
area appears on screen. At the same time, the rest of the screen appears
darker than normal. I didn't think to get a screen shot. I don't know if
it would even work, but I did make a decent approximation of the effect
in the gimp:

http://members.cox.net/daboid/misc/bright_corner.png

I awoke this morning, "woke" the monitor from standby, and there was a
bright patch similar to the image above. It's also happened right before
my eyes as I'm working at the computer.

I'm running a 9800-pro on a Slackware Linux system with X.org 6.8.2. If
I stop X, and restart (which is pretty much the same thing as restarting
Windows, back in the Win9x days when you could do that without a total
reboot), the screen is normal again.

I realize most of the discussion here is related to issues under Windows
but, since it is a Radeon, I'm hoping you folks can reliably confirm or
deny whether this sort of thing is known to happen with dying Radeons,
or at least point me to some information that's relevant.

I'm really at a loss. I haven't been able to find any discussion of such
a thing on the 'Net, and I've certainly never seen it before. Has anyone
heard of Radeon cards developing shuch behavior? The card is only about
a year old... never overclocked, and kept in a well ventilated system.

Any ideas what this is, anyone?

Thanks,
Jonathan


Celestica Radeon 9800-Pro 128MB
X11R6.8.2 (X.org source; home built; optimized for Athlon-XP)
ATI Video Driver fglrx_6_8_0-8.20.8-i386-1
windowmaker-0.92.0

Video cards die in all sorts of weird and not so wonderful ways. My old
one used to display annoying 2D artifacts in both Windows and Linux, and
even at BIOS (that's if the system managed to boot at all). Try use a
live CD of Linux and check if the problem persists.

 

[Jonathan A.]

Video cards die in all sorts of weird and not so wonderful ways. My old
one used to display annoying 2D artifacts in both Windows and Linux, and
even at BIOS (that's if the system managed to boot at all). Try use a
live CD of Linux and check if the problem persists.

I don't know that I could stand being out of my "native" habitat long
enough for the live CD test. I'm going to try running with the
generic "radeon" X.org driver for a while next time I reboot and see
what happens. (A reboot shouldn't even be necessary, but that fool fglrx
driver puts the card in such a state that the X.org radeon driver won't
work properly until the machine is rebooted. Hell... maybe a reboot is
all it needs, for all I know.)

ciao,
Jonathan

 

[Matt Ion]

Over the past couple of days I have seen a few occasions when a bright
area appears on screen. At the same time, the rest of the screen appears
darker than normal. I didn't think to get a screen shot. I don't know if
it would even work, but I did make a decent approximation of the effect
in the gimp:

http://members.cox.net/daboid/misc/bright_corner.png

I awoke this morning, "woke" the monitor from standby, and there was a
bright patch similar to the image above. It's also happened right before
my eyes as I'm working at the computer.

I'm running a 9800-pro on a Slackware Linux system with X.org 6.8.2. If
I stop X, and restart (which is pretty much the same thing as restarting
Windows, back in the Win9x days when you could do that without a total
reboot), the screen is normal again.

I realize most of the discussion here is related to issues under Windows
but, since it is a Radeon, I'm hoping you folks can reliably confirm or
deny whether this sort of thing is known to happen with dying Radeons,
or at least point me to some information that's relevant.

I'm really at a loss. I haven't been able to find any discussion of such
a thing on the 'Net, and I've certainly never seen it before. Has anyone
heard of Radeon cards developing shuch behavior? The card is only about
a year old... never overclocked, and kept in a well ventilated system.

Any ideas what this is, anyone?

What kind of monitor do you have?

I used to have an Acer monitor that had that as a "feature" - a
front-panel button would light up a pre-defined area of the screen
looking just like your example there. It was supposed to be some kind
of highlight thing for graphics work.

Maybe your monitor has this feature and is failing and turning it on
randomly?


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[Jonathan A.]

I used to have an Acer monitor that had that as a "feature" - a
front-panel button would light up a pre-defined area of the screen
looking just like your example there. It was supposed to be some kind
of highlight thing for graphics work.

Aha! That's the ticket. It's a Philips 107s and, I never noticed, but it
has a "LightFrame" logo in the upper right corner of the cabinet. I went
to the Philips website, and snarfed the manual, and sure enough:

Q: How does LightFrame work?

A: LightFrame consists of a software application and an Integrated
Circuit (IC) embedded in the monitor. Together, they boost brightness
and sharpness in a user defined window or screen area. Unique
LightFrame technology dramatically improves photo and video display
quality.

That's got to be it. In fact, I found out today, that if I forced the
monitor into DPMS standby, and "woke" it, I could reproduce the frame.
Then if I force DPMS again, but *don't* give the monitor time to switch
into standby mode, the screen returns to normal.

So it's the monitor, after all, and not the video card. That's a relief.
Worst case, I can replace the monitor with a second hand monitor from a
friend. If the card was dying, I was looking at a couple hundred bucks
to replace it wih a current-gen equivalent.

Not that I would mind a new card, but I don't want to throw my money
at a new one until I'm ready to upgrade to a PCI-E motherboard and
Athlon64. What a waste it would have been to have to buy another AGP
card for this old box. (Sigh... "Old?" The damn thing was a screaming
monster just a year and a half ago. It's just a has-been, now.)

Anyhow, thanks for the input. I'm breathing easier, now.

Jonathan

 

[Matt Ion]

So it's the monitor, after all, and not the video card. That's a relief.
Worst case, I can replace the monitor with a second hand monitor from a
friend. If the card was dying, I was looking at a couple hundred bucks
to replace it wih a current-gen equivalent.

Well, from the sound of it, I doubt the monitor is going bad... sounds
like DPMS is somehow triggering the LightFrame, which could be any
number of thing, possibly even other software, or if you perhaps
installed a new screensaver or monitor or video driver recently. If it
integrates to software on the PC, you could try removing or disabling
that software (see if Philips' knowledgebase has info on that).

Anyhow, thanks for the input. I'm breathing easier, now.

Glad to help


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[Jonathan A.]

Well, from the sound of it, I doubt the monitor is going bad... sounds
like DPMS is somehow triggering the LightFrame, which could be any
number of thing, possibly even other software, or if you perhaps
installed a new screensaver or monitor or video driver recently.

Actually, I first noticed it when running a new build of the DR17
development branch of the Enlightenment window manager. It's mighty
buggy code, and I blamed Enlightenment in the first place, until I saw
the LightFrame thing happen under WindowMaker, too.

A bit further in the monitor's manual, I read:

LightFrame goes into the Suspended mode as soon as a screensaver
becomes active on your computer. This is true even though the monitor
icon may still have a green center. LightFrame becomes active again
as soon as the screen is reawakened and the screensaver quits.

The same is true when the computer goes into Sleep mode or Deep Sleep
(Power Off) mode. LightFrame goes into Suspended mode and reawakens
when the monitor is reawakened.

So, my bet is that it was Enlightenment that put the monitor into the
"LightFrame state" after all, and DPMS just happened to trigger it on
and off. After manually powering off the monitor for a minute (Doh! Who
would have though of that?) it seems to be all cleared up now. I think
I'll give Enlightenment a rest for a while, though.

ciao,
Jonathan

 

[Borderline Psycho]

I've got a Phillips 109B4 monitor that had the same problem about a
month ago. Phillips has a utility on their website that will allow
you to designate certain windows to be brighter (i.e. video) called
Lightframe. I don't know if it will work with your monitor, but for
me I installed it and ran it once. That cleared up the problem. I
then uninstalled the program. Haven't had a problem since.

BL