Almost my first heart attack - or how my monitor failed me

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botg
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Almost my first heart attack - or how my monitor failed me

#1 Post by botg » 2004-03-13 00:34

The whole story started so simple: I had been watching Running Man using my TV card (nice movie though with a serious logic error even after several beer) and after that I wanted to check my mailbox. I started Thunderbird and all of a sudden the monitor powered off for a split of a second. After that it did display everything with a nice touch of yellow.
I jumped out of my chair, thinking "holy crab (censored word), what's that?".

I turned the monitor on and off and rebooted my machine, didn't help. I pulled at the cable, as I already suspected that didn't help as well. I plugged the monitor into my notebook (or laptop, depends how you would define it) and I did immediately knew that I could still rely on my fellow graphics card (powered by ATI).

Now I was desperate: Monitor repairs are almost as expensive as a new monitor nowadays. Also I didn't want to buy a new CRT monitor, those give me headaches even with 100Hz. An TFT display would be a suitable replacement, however you can't imagine how expensive a TFT is with a decent resolution. Decent in my case is anything equal or above 1600x1200 (God [if it exists, can't really be proved nor disproved yet] bless my Dell Inspiron 8200 Notebook with it's godlike display). I'm not a millionaire, so I can't afford a stand-alone TFT with 1600x1200 resolution.
I really wonder why such displays are so cheap it bundled with a notebook :?

Out of the void I had an inspiration: Maybe the hardware isn't broken, it could just be the software! After all software controlling the monitor settings is not open-source, so there's no way any reasonable person would ever consider to trust it.

So I opend the OSD and went to the page controlling the color temperature. Guess what: The blue color channel was set to zero! Now I was baffled. How could something that simple as the monitor software could contain such a serious bug? Even if the monitor would run with Windows CE (in that case every color channel despite blue would be zero) I would not expect such a bug.

This problem shows only one thing: There's absolutely no quality testing for commercial software. Even unpatchable, hard-coded software contains serious bugs.
So if possible, please try to avoid to use commercial software at all costs. Buy monitors with analog controls, use routers which us free software and sue Bill Gats for being totally evil.
I've drawn a conclusion from this: I won't stop writing free software until commecial software has been declared illegal :twisted:

PS: I've already emptied several bottles of my favourite beer, so please excuse by poor English.

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#2 Post by Patte » 2004-03-16 12:03

You are fucken drunk Tim...

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#3 Post by botg » 2004-03-16 19:58

Watch your words!

Actually I did not trink anything containing C2H5OH or the good old self-burned CH3OH :P

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Re: Almost my first heart attack - or how my monitor failed

#4 Post by Patte » 2004-03-18 00:28

botg wrote:[...]

PS: I've already emptied several bottles of my favourite beer, so please excuse by poor English.
liar

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#5 Post by botg » 2004-03-18 08:53

Have you ever considers that my favourite beer could be Clausthaler? :roll:

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#6 Post by Patte » 2004-03-18 18:12

that's no beer







<censored word>.

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#7 Post by panfr » 2004-03-26 09:39

Beer is nice, but wine is better (and I don't mean that damn thing which randomly sort-of fires windows applications under Linux, only to regret it next time...).

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#8 Post by botg » 2004-03-26 12:41

What? You mean that there's a different program which is called wine? No let's sue them :twisted:

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Re: Almost my first heart attack - or how my monitor failed

#9 Post by Shootfirst?later » 2004-03-28 03:25

botg wrote:...after that I wanted to check my mailbox. I started Thunderbird and...
Mozilla Thunderbird Rules!

and lets not forget Mozilla , Firefox.


What monitor is it by the way that caused you this .... uh grief.

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#10 Post by Golyc » 2004-03-30 21:40

botg wrote:Have you ever considers that my favourite beer could be Clausthaler? :roll:
In brazil we don´t have this bear.... in any case i don´t like or drink bear (only 14 years old ^^ :lol: ) soh good apetite ! bunk don´t code FZ3 when uou are dunk or it will crash several times before the release ! :shock: :D

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#11 Post by panfr » 2004-04-14 21:45

Golyc wrote:
botg wrote:Have you ever considers that my favourite beer could be Clausthaler? :roll:
In brazil we don´t have this bear.... in any case i don´t like or drink bear (only 14 years old ^^ :lol: ) soh good apetite ! bunk don´t code FZ3 when uou are dunk or it will crash several times before the release ! :shock: :D
It wouldn't harm you much, unless I miss something (I am not german) this is a non-alcoholic beer...

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#12 Post by botg » 2004-04-14 22:16

Do you remember the Simpsons episode where Springfield was under prohibition? In one scene the Duff brewery presented the new Duff free and in the next scene they had to close the factory.

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#13 Post by calebrw » 2004-07-16 18:36

botg wrote:Do you remember the Simpsons episode where Springfield was under prohibition? In one scene the Duff brewery presented the new Duff free and in the next scene they had to close the factory.
No not really...
But the Simpsons is awesome!
Caleb R. W.

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#14 Post by botg » 2004-07-16 20:09

Futurama is better.

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#15 Post by mf_2 » 2004-07-19 12:36

No! Simpsons 4 ever!
I can watch three episodes per day from Monday to Friday.
One on German TV ( ProSieben, w/ commercial breakes ) and two on Austrian TV ( ORF1, w/o annoying commercial breakes! )
I hate that stupid futurama thing!

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