Adventures with Computers
My final three exams for this semester are approaching fast:
So if you don’t hear from me, then you can assume that I’m busy reading slides or papers for one of the exams…
Hehe, I finally found Captain Blondebeards membership card to the Brimstone Beach Club… and so I could get past the pesky cabaña boy! But only to find myself confronted with a very hot beach:
Luckily I think I know how to get across — it’s (unfortunately) not the first time I play The Curse of Monkey Island :-)
I would like to give a big thanks to the brilliant guys making the ScummVM engine, allowing me to play the game on Linux! You’re doing a great job of keeping these old games alive.
So… I’ve finally got a new monitor for my machine! After reading tons of online reviews I decided for the NEC MultiSync LCD2070NX, a 20″ LCD display with a native resolution of 1600 × 1200 pixels. Take a look at it:
The monitor comes in two colors: all grey (which they probably call “silver” :-) and black/grey. Mine is the black/grey one — I don’t know why it was cheaper than the all grey one?
I picked it up at Digitec Friday afternoon and hurried home as fast as I could! Connecting it was easy and after adjusting my X server I got a nice, crystal-clear image with 1600 × 1200 pixels running at 71 Hz. The new display is increadibly sharp compared to my aging PHILIPS 201P (which I bought in August 2000). It is actually almost too sharp, at least that was what I thought at first, but now I’m getting used to it! :-)
Since this is my first LCD monitor I had been reading a lot of reviews and tests online. Finding such tests proved more difficult that one would expect because of all the idiotic price comparison sites out there. They all write something like “Prices and reviews for ⟨product⟩ at ⟨site⟩”, meaning that Google will list them first when you search for the product number together with words like “review” or “test”. The problem is that these sites almost always lie by claiming to have reviews but in reality there are none.
Searching the newsgroups was more effective, as was searching specific sites such as Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware Guide, so in the end I did find some reviews. Reading through the reviews for big LCDs was strange: there always seemed to be something wrong with them! They would either be too slow for gaming (not a concern for me) and movies (a bigger concern for me, especially since we’re using my computer as our TV), or they would have poor colors / contrast / brightness! Reading the very comprehensive Contemporary LCD Monitor Parameters and Characteristics guide at X-bit didn’t really help: it explains how the characteristics of LCD panels are much worse than what we’re used to from good old CRT monitors, and how the manufactures constantly try to make their products look better by inflating the specifications. Sigh!
But since I couldn’t keep using my computer through an SSH connection from Stéphanie’s laptop I bought one anyways :-) And I’m very pleased with it! I’ve checked it for dead pixels with some online test images and I haven’t found any — all 1.92 million pixels (5.76 million subpixels) seems to be in order! The image is — as already mentioned :-) — very sharp, and that is with a normal VGA cable, not DVI. The credit (once again) for this goes to Matrox for making the amazing G400 graphics card! I’ve had it for almost five years now and it’s still one of the best for 2D graphics: fanless (a must!) and sharp.
One day I’ll probably upgrade to a G550 Dual-DVI or something similar to get DVI output, but it will only be if the G400 burns out or I buy a second monitor… for now what I have it just great!
I was sitting quietly playing The Curse of Monkey Island when the screen went completely blank… At first I thought it was the DPMS kicking in, that it had somehow managed to ignore my mouse movements. I pressed ⟨shift⟩ a couple of times but it didn’t help; I pressed ⟨Ctrl⟩-⟨Alt⟩-⟨F1⟩ to switch to the console, but it didn’t help.
Going back to my X server I restarted it (⟨Ctrl⟩-⟨Alt⟩-⟨Backspace⟩) but even that didn’t bring back the display. It killed all my open programs, and stopped the game music, confirming that the rest of the computer was operating normally.
Using Stéphanie’s laptop I was able to [SSH][] into my box and reboot it — the machine came up fine, but still with no image on my monitor. I then connected the laptop directly to the monitor, but that didn’t change anything. So it’s not a problem with my trusty old Matrox G400.
The monitor seems to be reacting to keypresses on the front of it and to sleep commands sent to it: the little diode switches from green to orange as usual and the monitor makes its normal sounds (a somewhat loud “boing”-sound when being awaken and a mild “static”-sound when going to sleep).
I’ve tried to let the monitor cool down a bit by having it turned off for half an hour, but like everything else that didn’t help either? Does anybody have any good ideas? I guess I should try replacing the BNC cable with a regular monitor cable, but how should such a cable become corrupt from one moment to another?!
It’s a real shame if it’s really broke — I really liked it in the five years I’ve had it.
Yesterday and today it’s been sunny all day with temperatures of over 30° C! How very strange — I had just gotten used to rainy weather, but then the sun comes back.
I hope the good weather will help clear up the remaining flooded areas here in Switzerland. I read in the 20 Minuten newspaper (ugh… they have way too many ads on their page!) that the Thun sea had finally reached a level below the so-called “damage level”. I assume this means that the sea is no longer flooding the area. A week ago the water reached a level of 70 cm over the damage level…