Hrm im trying to fix a Sony G400 using WinDAS but it keeps failing during the flash ,all I did was lower the G2 value from its default 106 to 86 and I used Programmers Notepad 2 to make the edit & save, I cloned my FW900 so I could see whats going on and this is what it shows:
Im able to reflash the monitor with the original G400 data so the cable is functioning properly ..Any ideas appreciated.
Sony G400 monitor and all I was trying to do was lower the G2 but I figured out the problem , for some reason windas doesn't like 2 digit edits on the G2 value, I was changing it from 106 to 86 which kept failing during a flash, I even tried using another program (hex editor) but it still failed, However after entering 086 instead of 86 it flashed fine (used programmers notepad).
86 ended up being a little to high so I lowered it to 75 (I used 075 for the edit) , the monitor now looks amazing I couldn't believe how much better it looks, No more retrace lines,contrast & colors are vibrant and the black levels are superb, brightness is at 50 / Contrast 80.
Heres a couple before and after shots:
Monitor displaying a black screen with Brightness set on 0:
I've seen this before... Go ahead and use the "EDIT" editor (START - RUN - EDIT), and open the original file on "OPEN BINARY" (must click on this box). Change the parameters, and then save the file with a short name like G400a.
Then try loading it again, and let's hope it works this time.
Hello every body ,
thank you all for a great furom. especially the Dell brightness thread , lots of qualified people here .i am new here and this is my first post ,
i have done the cable and the WINDAS with the patch . i have selected P991which is my monitor
working with the P991 i had the value of G at 105 which was way too bright
using the EDIT.com from XP was tricky but i got it working. got the G down to 90 which is great , had to use 2 monitors .
If any of you find trouble dealing with a P991 email :type: me here i will help. especially with the "ECS syntax error" and the "ECS NG! NG! NG! " messages.also with EDIT.COM when it gives you the "Label not right " or some message like that message after using edit.com
thank you all .
:celebrate
I would just like to say thank you to everyone on this thread. I was given two Dell P1110 21" monitors and was looking forward to setting up a dual screen set up on my Radeon 9700 Pro. I was so dissapointed when I got it all set up to find the brightness problem in varying degrees on both monitors.
A Google search led me to this thread and after purchasing a cable from the EBay link I was able to get both monitors displaying almost perfectly. The only thing worth noting is that my Radeon 9700 has a VGA and a DVI output, the monitor on the DVI output (via an adapter) seems to display colours much better than the monitor on the VGA output. I swapped the monitors round on the outputs but the DVI remained the better display. However, I can put up with it and the difference is only slight, and I am now enjoying a great dual display system.
Anyway, thank you to everyone and keep up the great work.
Thanks to the info in this thread, I have successfully restored my sony G500 monitor by recalibrating the G2 value down to 130. So i wanted to share my experience with others so that if other people run into the same problem as me then this may be helpful to them.
I found out that in order to connect to the monitor with WINDAS, THE MONITOR MUST BE RECIEVING A VIDEO SIGNAL FROM A COMPUTER!! In other words you should have it connected to the VGA port on your video card and have the monitor enabled in windows. I tried to use windas without having the monitors VGA cable connected and found that the program would crash when clicking on certain things under the menus, and I also got these error messages when I tried to "File> Save data to set"
"bus is NG! check connection"
"Check RS232C line"
THE PROCEDURE!
Heres what I experienced:
1. HOOKING UP THE MONITOR TO THE PC
I bough this cable
Note the transmit and recieve wires are swapped around to what the sony G500 service manual says.
I then connected the other end of the cable to my COM 1 serial port and fired up windas.
CONFIGURING WINDAS
Upon first starting windas, I recieved two or three error messages about Astro SG. I just clicked OK on these. YOU SHOULDNT NEED TO WORRY IF YOU GET THESE ERROR MESSAGES ABOUT ASTRO SG - because you will still be able to fix the over brightness problem, so read on.
1. First things first, I went to the Setup menu and clicked model Sel. I found my model in the list, the sony CPD-G500 and selected that and clicked OK.
2. Then i went to Config and selected COM1 for the port and "MANUAL" for the "SG Name" setting.
3. Then I went to save my monitors existing configuration to a file by clicking on the "File" menu and clicking "Save data to file". I then clicked Go on the dialog box that came up, but got the following two error messages:
"bus is NG! check connection"
"Check RS232C line"
And then the program basically froze up on me. Feeling a little disheartened, I went online in search of some answers, and found that you MUST have the VGA cable also connected and the video card sending a signal to the monitor. this is to bring the monitor out of its standby mode - The power light should be green when trying to connect with Windas.
So I hooked up the VGA cable and enabled the monitor in my video card's control panel. I then retried the procedure again, starting from step 3. This time when I clicked go, the progress bar started moving along steadily and within a minute it had saved the configuration of my monitor.
4. I opened the saved config file using edit.com which is a hex editor and is located in my C:\windows\system32 folder. If you're running windows XP DO NOT USE NOTEPAD TO EDIT THE CONFIG FILE - IT WONT SAVE THE FILE CORRECTLY!! I saved my changes (lowered my G2 value from 180 to 130) and that was that.
Well from there on the procedure was straightforward and I simply followed the steps as outlined in DELL P1110's helpful howto guide, which is here:
I have a single file Windas installer (.exe , 1.4mb) which installs everything for you if anyone cares to host it ,Seems it would be a lot easier than the windas install methods mentioned on the geocities site, I've used it on 2 monitors so I know it works.
I've seen this before... Go ahead and use the "EDIT" editor (START - RUN - EDIT), and open the original file on "OPEN BINARY" (must click on this box). Change the parameters, and then save the file with a short name like G400a.
Then try loading it again, and let's hope it works this time.
Take care...
Luis A. Grunauer, Jr.
Hrm well that wasn't the problem because I was able to flash the monitor with the original data that I had saved from windas , the file name for that one was g400_original.dat which is actually a longer file name than the file that kept failing , g400_lowerg2.dat,so It must of been the 2 digit edits (?) , I'm guessing most people haven't had to lower the G2 into the double digits so it might not be a well known issue is all, unless I'm missing something.
Thanks! I stuck a shiny butterknife in there and read off the layout from the board itself.
FW900 Owners - Here is the correct pin layout!
GND
+5
RX
TX
congraz!
I got the same cable with you and am using FW900 too, how do you EXACTLY do to swap the two cables? just cut them off and replace or what? sorry if this is stupid, as I never try anything like this before...and i dont want to ruin the cable.
Thanks very much!! any help is GREATLY appreciated!!
Hi guys,
I found this thread and thought it was the answer to my dreams but unfortunately not. I opened the back of my Chuntex PR1400F which uses a 21" Sony tube but couldn't locate the 4 pin header I need to change the settings of the G2. I eventually found a header but I'm not sure if its the right one or not and have no idea of the pin layout (they are in a square rather than in a line).
Anyone any ideas if this is the right header, anyone know what the layout is? Pics attached.
This thread is really helpful. After reading I bought parts from ebay and set up my own cable with breadboard. It worked great.
I have two dell p1110s, one is fine after the adjustment, but the other one black looked brown, not pure black/grey. I guess the thing I need to adjust is white balance? anybody knows how to adjust white balance with windas? Or can I just set the brown monitor with the data file I get from the good one? Wondering if each monitor got its own unique data and if the data file is exchangeable.
I have two dell p1110s, one is fine after the adjustment, but the other one black looked brown, not pure black/grey. I guess the thing I need to adjust is white balance? anybody knows how to adjust white balance with windas? Or can I just set the brown monitor with the data file I get from the good one? Wondering if each monitor got its own unique data and if the data file is exchangeable.
No, it would not be a good idea to exchange the data files. Each monitor's construction is different, the reason there is a software configuration capability is so that each monitor's picture will look good even though they are all slightly different internally. I suspect if you tried this your monitor would look much worse than before.
I would recommend trying to change your video card settings (ATI or nVidia control panel, for instance) to get an acceptable color balance before you try to use WINDAS. You can change the gain separately for red green and blue, or use the built-in wizards and a colorimeter to match your white balance to a standard (like D50). If you can't get an acceptable setting that way or if you have already tried, please post again!
This thread is really helpful. After reading I bought parts from ebay and set up my own cable with breadboard. It worked great.
I have two dell p1110s, one is fine after the adjustment, but the other one black looked brown, not pure black/grey. I guess the thing I need to adjust is white balance? anybody knows how to adjust white balance with windas? Or can I just set the brown monitor with the data file I get from the good one? Wondering if each monitor got its own unique data and if the data file is exchangeable.
Thanks,
Just like gravix said each monitor has it own Dat file and is slightelly diffirant.
but I have to disagree, about using collor adjustment from VGA card .
I have tried to adjust the colors using windas have succeeded in changing the values but not in the correction of colors i.e. getting the right balance, so I went back to my backed up DAT file I kept 2 copies and reinstalled one of them into the monitor, off course I hade to use another monitor since I had blackened mine all together. but it came out fine.
Color adjustment using windas is a very long process.
you can start color adjustment through windas. i think from the menu a word called "procedure" very very advanced .
but like i said get another PC one for sony's Test pattern and another for your windas to run on. then back up your original dat files a number of times then you can start color adjustment with windas.
best regards.
I recently got a SUN GDM-5510 and the brightness is crazy... I have the contrast at 100 and the brightness at 12 and still I can see washed out grey/green scan lines and the bootup is very greyish... Will the windas program work on this monitor, and does Xweebie still help to customize the settings?
Also if anyone is here in Oregon and already has a cable or knows where I can get one locally let me know!
You can correct this "overly bright" problem in a more mechanical way. First set brightness to 50% with the normal front controls and then adjust the "screen" adjustment on the flyback transformer with a plastic screwdriver (very important that a plastic screwdriver is used) until black gets black.
Take it carefully in the beginning so you see which way makes it brighter/darker and when you see which way to turn, don't turn it any more in the way which makes it brighter as if you make it too bright, a safety circuit will turn of the monitor.
When removing the monitors plastic case, don't use a regular screwdriver push clips, instead use something that has an uniform thickness (a screwdriver gets thicker as you get further from the end of it), or else your monitors case will look like ****e afterwards. I use the flat pin on a KRONE tool for this .
When the case is removed, put some support under the front part of the monitor, just before the plastic front begins (it is forward-heavy and doesn't need support at the back).
The flyback adjustments should now be accessible through holes in the metal shielding.
Btw, the monitor needs to be running when you are doing this and it should have been running with a rather quite bright picture showing for atleast 10mins so it is heated up properly. Don't poke any fingers through any holes in the shielding, that can be lethal!
First of all, thanks P991 DELL SONY for all the valuable info.
Question concerning increasing the max contrast level on a FW900. I increased my DRIVE_MAX value from 210 to 255 (255 is the max it will let you increase it to), and it increased the contrast a lot (thanks again, deetox)......but i need more contrast. I tried increasing my ABL_CONT_LIMIT from 173 to 193, but noticed no difference in contrast (or anything else, for that matter). I was hoping that by increasing the ABL_CONT_LIMIT would allow me to increase more the DRIVE_MAX variable above 255, but it did not.
What exactly does increasing the ABL_CONT_LIMIT do? Does it have anything to do with contrast?
I decreased my G2 variable from 149 to 140, which increase my brightness 'true black' level from 12 to 33. Would lowering my G2 value more help me out at all with contrast?
What else can i do to increase the contrast on my FW900?
I have a Compaq P1100 monitor which had the infamous bright problem. I thought in fixing it, but I didn't use it too much so I didn't take the time to build the cable, install windas and so on...
Well, one day I was looking to the screen and all of a sudden it started to fade quickly. It lost all its bright in bount 5 seconds, then nothing. The monitor remained ON, but no menu nor signal was visible. I build my cable, installed the software and I tried to look to the settings of the monitor. Everything seems to be screwed-up: for example G2 was in error. I changed G2 to a mid-of-scale value (130) and it didn't work, I think that because other values might be affected. An now I am wondering if anyone would be willing to send me a proper .dat file for a Compaq P1100. I am aware that the result might not be very good, but the monitor isn't working right now anyway. It might also be a hardware problem, but I would rather try the soft way before.
I finally have my IBM P260 (WinDAS model#6552-63N) back in reasonable shape, thanks to the many helpful hints in this thread, which I did read from beginning to end!
It was overly bright and showing scan line returns; it also had an awful yellow tint, so my black was actually quite an icky yellow-brown. And whites; have you looked into the sun lately?
I bought my cable from DigitalNemesis.com (Ash is a top bloke), custom item description: "RLC-1 RS232 Serial Level Converter with custom cable. 3' length, 4way. 1=GND, 2=5V, 3=TX, 4=RX". Including tax and freight I paid AUD$31.90. A little expensive, but it's nice work and saved me much effort.
Rested the monitor on it's face on a blanket, removed the plates covering the four screws, removed the screws. Amazingly, the outer shell came all the way off easily, nothing to pry or bend or scream at!
I had to perform the white balance manually by eye and guesswork as I don't have access to a calibration spyder, nor do I understand what most of the value labels mean.
Despite this, I have ended up with reasonable colour and much lower brightness. A side-effect is lower contrast than I would like, but I think I'll save more playing for another day.
The best thing is that I can now watch movies on my PC again, without them being in lovely sepia-vision!
Hello all. New to the forum. I have a Dell branded P1110 21" monitor. Although i do not have the brightness problem (as far as i can tell), i do have a fuzzyness problem. The convergence is set perfect in the dead center of the screen but if i move to the sides, up or down, it becomes distorted. I have controls for top, bottom and center vertical, and controls for horizontal center. What would cause the colors to seperate from eachother towards the right and left (center) edges. I also have a P991 that does the same thing BUT there is no noticable fuzzyness. If im looking at black text on a white background, for example an L, there seems to be the black letter, with some grey shadow, not apparent on the entire letter just the right side. Is this caused by the brightness problem?
Hello all. New to the forum. I have a Dell branded P1110 21" monitor. Although i do not have the brightness problem (as far as i can tell), i do have a fuzzyness problem. The convergence is set perfect in the dead center of the screen but if i move to the sides, up or down, it becomes distorted. I have controls for top, bottom and center vertical, and controls for horizontal center. What would cause the colors to seperate from eachother towards the right and left (center) edges. I also have a P991 that does the same thing BUT there is no noticable fuzzyness. If im looking at black text on a white background, for example an L, there seems to be the black letter, with some grey shadow, not apparent on the entire letter just the right side. Is this caused by the brightness problem?
Thanks,
_Dan
Possibly your focus is out. :hitit2: (only jokeing!)
You can adjust this on the flyback inside the monitor but use extreme caution. Do not go anywhere near the cable that goes into a suction cup on the top of the picture tube. High voltages are present. Use an electritions screwdriver to adjust the focus by turning left or right until all is zero'd in.
Thef lyback is(if i can remmember!)at the back of the monitor near the top right hand corner(if you are looking towards the back) There are 2 adjustable nobs,the one you need will be marked Focus(printed next to the nob on the top of the flyback). Its the one on the right i think.
Thank you Ross for your reply. I hate to sound so stupid but what is the flyback and what does it do? I bought a new cable for the monitor today, triple shielded from my place of work (Microcenter) and installed it. I reset the monitor under every setting. When i reset, the screen gets smaller and black spaces appear on the sides, i can adjust the size of the picture to spread out and take up the whole area of course but when i do, the image gets significantly brighter and a bit fuzzy especially on the top vertical inch. The bottom also suffers but not as bad as far as i can tell. The image is perfect besides these two spots. It is generaly towards the center of the top and bottom, for example, the top or bottom vertical inch, about 2 1/2" in on both sides is fine but anything past the 2 1/2" is blurry/fuzzy. If this sounds confusing ( does to me ) i will take a snapshot to better elaborate on the positions. Thank you
Thank you Ross for your reply. I hate to sound so stupid but what is the flyback and what does it do? I bought a new cable for the monitor today, triple shielded from my place of work (Microcenter) and installed it. I reset the monitor under every setting. When i reset, the screen gets smaller and black spaces appear on the sides, i can adjust the size of the picture to spread out and take up the whole area of course but when i do, the image gets significantly brighter and a bit fuzzy especially on the top vertical inch. The bottom also suffers but not as bad as far as i can tell. The image is perfect besides these two spots. It is generaly towards the center of the top and bottom, for example, the top or bottom vertical inch, about 2 1/2" in on both sides is fine but anything past the 2 1/2" is blurry/fuzzy. If this sounds confusing ( does to me ) i will take a snapshot to better elaborate on the positions. Thank you
_Dan
Hi Dan,
A flyback transformer (FBT) or line output transformer (LOPT) is a type of transformer used to generate the high voltage needed for driving a cathode ray tube (CRT). It converts the input voltage, usually mains voltage in the range 120 to 240 volts, to an output voltage in the range 10 to 30 kilovolts for a colour tube (or just a few kilovolts for a monochrome tube).
Unlike mains transformers and audio transformers, a LOPT is designed to have windings with high inductance. This is achieved by winding the coils on a ferrite core with an air gap, which increases the reluctance of the magnetic circuit and therefore its capacity to store energy.
**IMPORTANT**A flyback transformer and its associated circuitry operate at lethally high voltages. Make sure that the transformer is switched off and any stored energy has been safely discharged. The CRT has an inherent capacitance which can hold a high voltage charge for a period after the power is switched off. Often a high resistance bleeder resistor is in parallel to ensure the charge is safely grounded when not in use, but it is not wise to assume this is the case. you should be ok if you dont mess with anything other than the focus control as it is easily accessable and not close to the circuitboard or capacitors etc just make sure you use an insulated screwdriver just in case you sneeze or something!!
If you try a program called nokia monitor test(google), run the high voltage test(after 30min warmup). The test should show 2 screens alternating from full white(with black border around) to a fill black(white border around).
This is to test the voltage regulation of the monitor. If when the white screen is displayed the overall picture seems to expand or get smaller this will highlight a problem.
Ahh oh i see. I ran the test, and wherever the white is, is where the screen expands. So this means what, i have to adjust this thing or find a new one?
Ahh oh i see. I ran the test, and wherever the white is, is where the screen expands. So this means what, i have to adjust this thing or find a new one?
Thanks
_Dan
This means there is a problem in the voltage regulation circuit. This could be a few things, crt leakage, number of other components in the volt reg curcuit.
I had a few P1110's and one of mine did this but only when the contrast and brightness were set high. I got around the problem by lowering the output of the 3 electron guns(RGB red/green/blue)in the osd. This can be done under the custom color setting.
1.Note the current values and write these down.
2 Lower all values by about 50.
3.Run the test and see if this decreases the amount that the white expands.
4.If the white is staying roughly the same size increase all the values by 10.
5.If the white is still stable gradully increase in steps of 10 untill the white starts its old tricks again.
I am hoping these are 2 separate probs and that the fuzziness may be sorted after focus adjustment. The voltage regulation solution above is just a workaround and may not work in most cases. You may need to replace componants which then starts costing money!!!
Anyway see how you get on.
All the best mate, now i am going to sleep because it is 3.00 :type: in the morning over here(England) and i need to get up for work in four hours!
Hello again.
I was wondering if there was other variables that i could change to increase my contrast level on my sony fw900 monitor? I increased my DRIVE_MAX as much as it could, which made a big difference, but need more contrast.
I also increased the ABL_CONT_LIMIT, but it had no effect on the contrast, or anything else i could see.
If you could please help me out i would be very greatful. If not, please let me know either way asap so i can return the computer i'm using with the com port to do windas.
Thanks much,
RIchard
Sorry for the late reply.
IIRC, ABL_CONT_SHUTDOWN is the max amount of instaneous average contrast level allowed before an emergency shutdown is forced. I suspect this has to do with x-ray regulation.
If you set this very low, you will notice that when you switch quickly from an all black to an all white screen, your monitor will shutdown and blink the diagnostic code for ABL shutdown.
ABL_CONT_LIMIT would be the max average brightness which the ABL will dim to incase the average becomes higher, as with a mostly white screen. For example, you can notice the screen dimming when switching to an all white screen if this value is set very low. Again, I suspect this is for x-ray regulation.
I am concerned about x-rays, unfourtunately, windas's own adjustment for these ABL settings is vague and doesn't seem to work. It says:
"
IMPORTANT! Wait for luminance to stabilize.
"
Then you click continue when it does, but my colorimeter revealed no luminance fluctuation after 2 minutes. And waiting that long set unbeleviably low values in the two ABL_* registers. Such that the ABL dimming was very noticeable, and shutdown came with opening the web browser to a white screen.
Be carefull, and also, very contrasty monitors often have gamma issues.
Good luck. I will paste this message to the forum as I'm sure others, myself for certain, are interested in increasing contrast and avoiding x-ray exposure.
About screen zooming on black->white:
I also used more conservative contrast and ABL settings to settle that out, my zooming/geometric distortion was never _really_ noticable anway, except on warmup where ~8 border pixels were off the screen. There is a resistor fix for this, which doesn't hinder x-ray protection. I'm not sure about how this whole voltage varying with apparent brightness stuff works.
I got an email about an odd problem, thought I'd post it:
I'm not familiar with the ICs in the monitor. Windas does not calibrate pure colors, as no calibration is needed for them. If you are sure only one of the guns is 'firing' (check this somehow), and the color is not pure, then you have purity problems with the tube. The service manual details how to re calibrate it (physically, with moving the magnets and the deflection yoke).
I don't believe there is any 'processing' for the colors as a group, each color has it's own signal. Each of the guns' electrons are deflected in such a way that they only strike either the R , G or B phosphors on the screen. So the color image is really made up of 3 independant RGB images.
The only 'color processing' that I know of is the white balance settings, each color is calibrated seperately, so the only way a pure color (R G or B) could turn into to a composite color such as yellow, would be through something other than 'color processing'.
There is amplification of the 3 video signals before they are each sent to the R, G, B cathodes, but this has nothing to do with deflection, and is done independantly for each signal. This is probably what is actually adjusted by the white balance procedure.
The only 'processing' in which colors would interact would be dimming composite colors such as cyan (B and G guns together) so that their maximum luminance would be equal to a pure color such as red ( only R gun). I'm not sure if this is actually done, or if it is even a problem, I doubt it.
Try displaying a pure color(R G or B) on the entire screen, if you see more than one color, you definately have a purity error. If you pass the previous test, try displaying a gradient of each primary color from 0 - 255 ( the whole VGA true color (24-bit) signal range (sorry, I should say input singal voltages, but I forget them, your video card should be correct )). If the color of each step changes, and you know that your video card is working properly, you have a truly bizare problem. Please write me back if you know anything more about it.
(There are programs to display the abovementioned test patterns)
I think what is happening, is that your monitors deflection system is not properly deflecting the pure color images (from the R, G , B cathodes) onto the correct phosphors of the screen. It is known as 'color purity error'. Read the service manual, it will detail how to calibrate color purity,without DAS software, instead with physically adjusted magnets and positioning of the deflection yoke. That your problem is dynamic (only shows up after 5 minutes) I fear static physical adjustments may not be the problem, but they are the only adjustmets the service manual offers for purity problems.As far as I know, there are no DAS procedures/registers that deal with the deflection system besides those for geometry and convergence. Still, before you try the static physical adjustments, make sure to back up your current settigs and MPU (defaults reset) your monitor with Windas, then folow the procedures in order. The MPU reset may set registers that are otherwise inaccessible. It doesn't seem too odd to have to adjust the deflection system after replacing one of it's ICs.
I highly doubt this is a white balance problem, I strongly suspect this is a purity problem, and I doubt there are registers that deal with purity, still, try MPUing (defaults reset) the monitor with windas after you backup your settings. I'm interested in knowing how you resolve this, would appreciate a reply. Thank you.
Best regards.
donald wrote:
The following message was sent to you via secured mail form
in reply to your message at Pechorin's audio and video equipment discussion forum:
Hi,
Last weak, my sony GDM500Ps got the deflection problem. I replaced the CXA2043Q and the proglem is fixed. However, after a few minutes, the red color is missing and the green color changed to greenish yellow. But the white color is OK. (That means, the red gun and the green gun is still function, it is the wrong signal processing). It seems the new chip causes the wrong color processing. Do I really need to use the DAS to re-adjust the settings? If so, which parameters must change? Your site does not have the explaination of each parameters so I get difficulty to try. Thanks.
Let me know if I have the wrong idea about this, or if you can fill me in about something. Any links, pointers, or misc. info/observations apreciated.
patrik:
Some monitors do not have a varistor for the G2 voltage on the flyback, or one at all ( the case for many newer sony monitors). My older 17" monitor did though, I wonder about the x-ray protection on it, as it didn't shut istelf down when I maxed out the G2? Scary.
dickhu:
Yeah, another .dat will not turn out very good at all, It's almost as easy to just reset the monitor to default settings. Infact, I'd try that after backing up your original settings.
Thanks for all your help and support! If anyone knows any general CRT information I'd love to hear about it to add it to my howto ( http://www.geocities.com/gregua/windas/ ). I think a section on general CRT concepts would do much to help people diagnose their own problems based on their monitors behavior.
This means there is a problem in the voltage regulation circuit. This could be a few things, crt leakage, number of other components in the volt reg curcuit.
I had a few P1110's and one of mine did this but only when the contrast and brightness were set high. I got around the problem by lowering the output of the 3 electron guns(RGB red/green/blue)in the osd. This can be done under the custom color setting.
1.Note the current values and write these down.
2 Lower all values by about 50.
3.Run the test and see if this decreases the amount that the white expands.
4.If the white is staying roughly the same size increase all the values by 10.
5.If the white is still stable gradully increase in steps of 10 untill the white starts its old tricks again.
I am hoping these are 2 separate probs and that the fuzziness may be sorted after focus adjustment. The voltage regulation solution above is just a workaround and may not work in most cases. You may need to replace componants which then starts costing money!!!
Anyway see how you get on.
All the best mate, now i am going to sleep because it is 3.00 :type: in the morning over here(England) and i need to get up for work in four hours!
R SS
OK! I did that and the screen didnt even jitter, as i moved them up though it did. Is this related to the G2 voltage problem? If so i will solder in a new resistor asap. You mentioned two probes for the fuzzyness, are there two seperate flyback transformers for top and bottom or something of that nature?
OK! I did that and the screen didnt even jitter, as i moved them up though it did. Is this related to the G2 voltage problem? If so i will solder in a new resistor asap. You mentioned two probes for the fuzzyness, are there two seperate flyback transformers for top and bottom or something of that nature?
Thanks,
_Dan
This is related to the voltage regulation.
You only need to mess with the G2 if your blacks are not true black and appear grey(sometimes with a tinge of green).
Do you have windas software and the needed cable ? I recommend using windas to lower the G2 than messing around with resisters.
Have you adjusted the focus yet? I know i have probably put you off going into the back of your monitor by going an about lethal voltages but the flyback(Just the one) is very easy to get to.
Just remmember when you try to take the case off you need to use a flat headed screwdriver to poke into the slits in the top near the front to unhook the tabs otherwise it wont come apart :banghead:
Was there any improvement in the fuzzines when you lowered the values?
Hey Ross, i do not have that cable but i dont mind building it if i can find the MAX232 chip at RadioShack. Funny thing, i also have a P991 and the convergence is off on that too i just dont notice it for some reason. It also seems that my P991 has a worse voltage problem than my P1110 because when i run the white block on back background test, it moves alot. Are these monitors just ****ty? I have a chance to buy a refurbished IBM 21" unit for 75 bucks where i work, do you think its worth it? Im partial to these DELL monitors because of how crisp they are but now i find myself being critical of every little problem (i have OCD). Anyways, yea lol.
Thanks,
_Dan
P.S. I am going to try to open the case of the 21" later, i took the screws out of the bottom and stuck a small screwdriver in the tab holes but the damn thinng wouldnt budge. Any ideas without destroying the case...?
Unfortunately as with most monitors and unlike what my father always tells me about things getting better with age, monitors as they get older(these particular models are around 6 years old now) start to get problems like this.
Let me know what model the IBM is and i will let you know if it is any good.
Whatever you do dont twist the screwdriver when its in one of the slots.What you need to do is press down firmly about 1" max into the slot while at the same
time trying to seperate the case from the bezel. when they have seperated stick something in the gap so that when you then move to do the same on the other side the tab doesnt snap back into position.
And hey presto! You have been successful in not terminating the biege beauty's
Natural good looks ! lol:ukflag:
Comments
Im able to reflash the monitor with the original G400 data so the cable is functioning properly ..Any ideas appreciated.
I am sure i have seen you and traxx on the hard forums=
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=952788&page=85&pp=20
Sony G400 monitor and all I was trying to do was lower the G2 but I figured out the problem , for some reason windas doesn't like 2 digit edits on the G2 value, I was changing it from 106 to 86 which kept failing during a flash, I even tried using another program (hex editor) but it still failed, However after entering 086 instead of 86 it flashed fine (used programmers notepad).
86 ended up being a little to high so I lowered it to 75 (I used 075 for the edit) , the monitor now looks amazing I couldn't believe how much better it looks, No more retrace lines,contrast & colors are vibrant and the black levels are superb, brightness is at 50 / Contrast 80.
Heres a couple before and after shots:
Monitor displaying a black screen with Brightness set on 0:
And after dropping the G2 to 75:
Black screen with brightness set on 50:
And:
Then try loading it again, and let's hope it works this time.
Take care...
Luis A. Grunauer, Jr.
thank you all for a great furom. especially the Dell brightness thread , lots of qualified people here .i am new here and this is my first post ,
i have done the cable and the WINDAS with the patch . i have selected P991which is my monitor
working with the P991 i had the value of G at 105 which was way too bright
using the EDIT.com from XP was tricky but i got it working.
If any of you find trouble dealing with a P991 email :type: me here i will help. especially with the "ECS syntax error" and the "ECS NG! NG! NG! " messages.also with EDIT.COM when it gives you the "Label not right " or some message like that message after using edit.com
thank you all .
:celebrate
A Google search led me to this thread and after purchasing a cable from the EBay link I was able to get both monitors displaying almost perfectly. The only thing worth noting is that my Radeon 9700 has a VGA and a DVI output, the monitor on the DVI output (via an adapter) seems to display colours much better than the monitor on the VGA output. I swapped the monitors round on the outputs but the DVI remained the better display. However, I can put up with it and the difference is only slight, and I am now enjoying a great dual display system.
Anyway, thank you to everyone and keep up the great work.
Thanks to the info in this thread, I have successfully restored my sony G500 monitor by recalibrating the G2 value down to 130. So i wanted to share my experience with others so that if other people run into the same problem as me then this may be helpful to them.
I found out that in order to connect to the monitor with WINDAS, THE MONITOR MUST BE RECIEVING A VIDEO SIGNAL FROM A COMPUTER!! In other words you should have it connected to the VGA port on your video card and have the monitor enabled in windows. I tried to use windas without having the monitors VGA cable connected and found that the program would crash when clicking on certain things under the menus, and I also got these error messages when I tried to "File> Save data to set"
"bus is NG! check connection"
"Check RS232C line"
THE PROCEDURE!
Heres what I experienced:
1. HOOKING UP THE MONITOR TO THE PC
I bough this cable
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7616961899
And after removing my monitors back cover, I connected the pins on the cable to the mopnitors service port in this order, from top to bottom:
pin # function
1. GND
2. STBY +5v
3. Transmit (TXD)
4. Recieve (RXD)
Note the transmit and recieve wires are swapped around to what the sony G500 service manual says.
I then connected the other end of the cable to my COM 1 serial port and fired up windas.
CONFIGURING WINDAS
Upon first starting windas, I recieved two or three error messages about Astro SG. I just clicked OK on these. YOU SHOULDNT NEED TO WORRY IF YOU GET THESE ERROR MESSAGES ABOUT ASTRO SG - because you will still be able to fix the over brightness problem, so read on.
1. First things first, I went to the Setup menu and clicked model Sel. I found my model in the list, the sony CPD-G500 and selected that and clicked OK.
2. Then i went to Config and selected COM1 for the port and "MANUAL" for the "SG Name" setting.
3. Then I went to save my monitors existing configuration to a file by clicking on the "File" menu and clicking "Save data to file". I then clicked Go on the dialog box that came up, but got the following two error messages:
"bus is NG! check connection"
"Check RS232C line"
And then the program basically froze up on me. Feeling a little disheartened, I went online in search of some answers, and found that you MUST have the VGA cable also connected and the video card sending a signal to the monitor. this is to bring the monitor out of its standby mode - The power light should be green when trying to connect with Windas.
So I hooked up the VGA cable and enabled the monitor in my video card's control panel. I then retried the procedure again, starting from step 3. This time when I clicked go, the progress bar started moving along steadily and within a minute it had saved the configuration of my monitor.
4. I opened the saved config file using edit.com which is a hex editor and is located in my C:\windows\system32 folder. If you're running windows XP DO NOT USE NOTEPAD TO EDIT THE CONFIG FILE - IT WONT SAVE THE FILE CORRECTLY!! I saved my changes (lowered my G2 value from 180 to 130) and that was that.
Well from there on the procedure was straightforward and I simply followed the steps as outlined in DELL P1110's helpful howto guide, which is here:
http://www.geocities.com/gregua/windas/
Hope that this post will be helpful for some.
Hrm well that wasn't the problem because I was able to flash the monitor with the original data that I had saved from windas , the file name for that one was g400_original.dat which is actually a longer file name than the file that kept failing , g400_lowerg2.dat,so It must of been the 2 digit edits (?) , I'm guessing most people haven't had to lower the G2 into the double digits so it might not be a well known issue is all, unless I'm missing something.
congraz!
I got the same cable with you and am using FW900 too, how do you EXACTLY do to swap the two cables? just cut them off and replace or what? sorry if this is stupid, as I never try anything like this before...and i dont want to ruin the cable.
Thanks very much!! any help is GREATLY appreciated!!
Ken
I found this thread and thought it was the answer to my dreams but unfortunately not. I opened the back of my Chuntex PR1400F which uses a 21" Sony tube but couldn't locate the 4 pin header I need to change the settings of the G2. I eventually found a header but I'm not sure if its the right one or not and have no idea of the pin layout (they are in a square rather than in a line).
Anyone any ideas if this is the right header, anyone know what the layout is? Pics attached.
Many thanks for any help you can give,
Paul
This thread is really helpful. After reading I bought parts from ebay and set up my own cable with breadboard. It worked great.
I have two dell p1110s, one is fine after the adjustment, but the other one black looked brown, not pure black/grey. I guess the thing I need to adjust is white balance? anybody knows how to adjust white balance with windas? Or can I just set the brown monitor with the data file I get from the good one? Wondering if each monitor got its own unique data and if the data file is exchangeable.
Thanks,
No, it would not be a good idea to exchange the data files. Each monitor's construction is different, the reason there is a software configuration capability is so that each monitor's picture will look good even though they are all slightly different internally. I suspect if you tried this your monitor would look much worse than before.
I would recommend trying to change your video card settings (ATI or nVidia control panel, for instance) to get an acceptable color balance before you try to use WINDAS. You can change the gain separately for red green and blue, or use the built-in wizards and a colorimeter to match your white balance to a standard (like D50). If you can't get an acceptable setting that way or if you have already tried, please post again!
Just like gravix said each monitor has it own Dat file and is slightelly diffirant.
but I have to disagree, about using collor adjustment from VGA card .
I have tried to adjust the colors using windas have succeeded in changing the values but not in the correction of colors i.e. getting the right balance, so I went back to my backed up DAT file I kept 2 copies and reinstalled one of them into the monitor, off course I hade to use another monitor since I had blackened mine all together. but it came out fine.
Color adjustment using windas is a very long process.
you can start color adjustment through windas. i think from the menu a word called "procedure" very very advanced .
but like i said get another PC one for sony's Test pattern and another for your windas to run on. then back up your original dat files a number of times then you can start color adjustment with windas.
best regards.
Also if anyone is here in Oregon and already has a cable or knows where I can get one locally let me know!
Take it carefully in the beginning so you see which way makes it brighter/darker and when you see which way to turn, don't turn it any more in the way which makes it brighter as if you make it too bright, a safety circuit will turn of the monitor.
When removing the monitors plastic case, don't use a regular screwdriver push clips, instead use something that has an uniform thickness (a screwdriver gets thicker as you get further from the end of it), or else your monitors case will look like ****e afterwards. I use the flat pin on a KRONE tool for this
When the case is removed, put some support under the front part of the monitor, just before the plastic front begins (it is forward-heavy and doesn't need support at the back).
The flyback adjustments should now be accessible through holes in the metal shielding.
Btw, the monitor needs to be running when you are doing this and it should have been running with a rather quite bright picture showing for atleast 10mins so it is heated up properly. Don't poke any fingers through any holes in the shielding, that can be lethal!
/Patrik
Question concerning increasing the max contrast level on a FW900. I increased my DRIVE_MAX value from 210 to 255 (255 is the max it will let you increase it to), and it increased the contrast a lot (thanks again, deetox)......but i need more contrast. I tried increasing my ABL_CONT_LIMIT from 173 to 193, but noticed no difference in contrast (or anything else, for that matter). I was hoping that by increasing the ABL_CONT_LIMIT would allow me to increase more the DRIVE_MAX variable above 255, but it did not.
What exactly does increasing the ABL_CONT_LIMIT do? Does it have anything to do with contrast?
I decreased my G2 variable from 149 to 140, which increase my brightness 'true black' level from 12 to 33. Would lowering my G2 value more help me out at all with contrast?
What else can i do to increase the contrast on my FW900?
Thanks much........
Well, one day I was looking to the screen and all of a sudden it started to fade quickly. It lost all its bright in bount 5 seconds, then nothing. The monitor remained ON, but no menu nor signal was visible. I build my cable, installed the software and I tried to look to the settings of the monitor. Everything seems to be screwed-up: for example G2 was in error. I changed G2 to a mid-of-scale value (130) and it didn't work, I think that because other values might be affected. An now I am wondering if anyone would be willing to send me a proper .dat file for a Compaq P1100. I am aware that the result might not be very good, but the monitor isn't working right now anyway. It might also be a hardware problem, but I would rather try the soft way before.
It was overly bright and showing scan line returns; it also had an awful yellow tint, so my black was actually quite an icky yellow-brown. And whites; have you looked into the sun lately?
I bought my cable from DigitalNemesis.com (Ash is a top bloke), custom item description: "RLC-1 RS232 Serial Level Converter with custom cable. 3' length, 4way. 1=GND, 2=5V, 3=TX, 4=RX". Including tax and freight I paid AUD$31.90. A little expensive, but it's nice work and saved me much effort.
Rested the monitor on it's face on a blanket, removed the plates covering the four screws, removed the screws. Amazingly, the outer shell came all the way off easily, nothing to pry or bend or scream at!
I had to perform the white balance manually by eye and guesswork as I don't have access to a calibration spyder, nor do I understand what most of the value labels mean.
Despite this, I have ended up with reasonable colour and much lower brightness. A side-effect is lower contrast than I would like, but I think I'll save more playing for another day.
The best thing is that I can now watch movies on my PC again, without them being in lovely sepia-vision!
Thanks,
_Dan
Possibly your focus is out. :hitit2: (only jokeing!)
You can adjust this on the flyback inside the monitor but use extreme caution. Do not go anywhere near the cable that goes into a suction cup on the top of the picture tube. High voltages are present. Use an electritions screwdriver to adjust the focus by turning left or right until all is zero'd in.
Thef lyback is(if i can remmember!)at the back of the monitor near the top right hand corner(if you are looking towards the back) There are 2 adjustable nobs,the one you need will be marked Focus(printed next to the nob on the top of the flyback). Its the one on the right i think.
Good luck and be careful!!
R
_Dan
Hi Dan,
A flyback transformer (FBT) or line output transformer (LOPT) is a type of transformer used to generate the high voltage needed for driving a cathode ray tube (CRT). It converts the input voltage, usually mains voltage in the range 120 to 240 volts, to an output voltage in the range 10 to 30 kilovolts for a colour tube (or just a few kilovolts for a monochrome tube).
Unlike mains transformers and audio transformers, a LOPT is designed to have windings with high inductance. This is achieved by winding the coils on a ferrite core with an air gap, which increases the reluctance of the magnetic circuit and therefore its capacity to store energy.
**IMPORTANT**A flyback transformer and its associated circuitry operate at lethally high voltages. Make sure that the transformer is switched off and any stored energy has been safely discharged. The CRT has an inherent capacitance which can hold a high voltage charge for a period after the power is switched off. Often a high resistance bleeder resistor is in parallel to ensure the charge is safely grounded when not in use, but it is not wise to assume this is the case. you should be ok if you dont mess with anything other than the focus control as it is easily accessable and not close to the circuitboard or capacitors etc just make sure you use an insulated screwdriver just in case you sneeze or something!!
If you try a program called nokia monitor test(google), run the high voltage test(after 30min warmup). The test should show 2 screens alternating from full white(with black border around) to a fill black(white border around).
This is to test the voltage regulation of the monitor. If when the white screen is displayed the overall picture seems to expand or get smaller this will highlight a problem.
R
Thanks
_Dan
This means there is a problem in the voltage regulation circuit. This could be a few things, crt leakage, number of other components in the volt reg curcuit.
I had a few P1110's and one of mine did this but only when the contrast and brightness were set high. I got around the problem by lowering the output of the 3 electron guns(RGB red/green/blue)in the osd. This can be done under the custom color setting.
1.Note the current values and write these down.
2 Lower all values by about 50.
3.Run the test and see if this decreases the amount that the white expands.
4.If the white is staying roughly the same size increase all the values by 10.
5.If the white is still stable gradully increase in steps of 10 untill the white starts its old tricks again.
I am hoping these are 2 separate probs and that the fuzziness may be sorted after focus adjustment. The voltage regulation solution above is just a workaround and may not work in most cases. You may need to replace componants which then starts costing money!!!
Anyway see how you get on.
All the best mate, now i am going to sleep because it is 3.00 :type: in the morning over here(England) and i need to get up for work in four hours!
R
IIRC, ABL_CONT_SHUTDOWN is the max amount of instaneous average contrast level allowed before an emergency shutdown is forced. I suspect this has to do with x-ray regulation.
If you set this very low, you will notice that when you switch quickly from an all black to an all white screen, your monitor will shutdown and blink the diagnostic code for ABL shutdown.
ABL_CONT_LIMIT would be the max average brightness which the ABL will dim to incase the average becomes higher, as with a mostly white screen. For example, you can notice the screen dimming when switching to an all white screen if this value is set very low. Again, I suspect this is for x-ray regulation.
I am concerned about x-rays, unfourtunately, windas's own adjustment for these ABL settings is vague and doesn't seem to work. It says:
"
IMPORTANT! Wait for luminance to stabilize.
"
Then you click continue when it does, but my colorimeter revealed no luminance fluctuation after 2 minutes. And waiting that long set unbeleviably low values in the two ABL_* registers. Such that the ABL dimming was very noticeable, and shutdown came with opening the web browser to a white screen.
Be carefull, and also, very contrasty monitors often have gamma issues.
Good luck. I will paste this message to the forum as I'm sure others, myself for certain, are interested in increasing contrast and avoiding x-ray exposure.
About screen zooming on black->white:
I also used more conservative contrast and ABL settings to settle that out, my zooming/geometric distortion was never _really_ noticable anway, except on warmup where ~8 border pixels were off the screen. There is a resistor fix for this, which doesn't hinder x-ray protection. I'm not sure about how this whole voltage varying with apparent brightness stuff works.
I got an email about an odd problem, thought I'd post it:
I'm not familiar with the ICs in the monitor. Windas does not calibrate pure colors, as no calibration is needed for them. If you are sure only one of the guns is 'firing' (check this somehow), and the color is not pure, then you have purity problems with the tube. The service manual details how to re calibrate it (physically, with moving the magnets and the deflection yoke).
I don't believe there is any 'processing' for the colors as a group, each color has it's own signal. Each of the guns' electrons are deflected in such a way that they only strike either the R , G or B phosphors on the screen. So the color image is really made up of 3 independant RGB images.
The only 'color processing' that I know of is the white balance settings, each color is calibrated seperately, so the only way a pure color (R G or B) could turn into to a composite color such as yellow, would be through something other than 'color processing'.
There is amplification of the 3 video signals before they are each sent to the R, G, B cathodes, but this has nothing to do with deflection, and is done independantly for each signal. This is probably what is actually adjusted by the white balance procedure.
The only 'processing' in which colors would interact would be dimming composite colors such as cyan (B and G guns together) so that their maximum luminance would be equal to a pure color such as red ( only R gun). I'm not sure if this is actually done, or if it is even a problem, I doubt it.
Try displaying a pure color(R G or B) on the entire screen, if you see more than one color, you definately have a purity error. If you pass the previous test, try displaying a gradient of each primary color from 0 - 255 ( the whole VGA true color (24-bit) signal range (sorry, I should say input singal voltages, but I forget them, your video card should be correct )). If the color of each step changes, and you know that your video card is working properly, you have a truly bizare problem. Please write me back if you know anything more about it.
(There are programs to display the abovementioned test patterns)
I think what is happening, is that your monitors deflection system is not properly deflecting the pure color images (from the R, G , B cathodes) onto the correct phosphors of the screen. It is known as 'color purity error'. Read the service manual, it will detail how to calibrate color purity,without DAS software, instead with physically adjusted magnets and positioning of the deflection yoke. That your problem is dynamic (only shows up after 5 minutes) I fear static physical adjustments may not be the problem, but they are the only adjustmets the service manual offers for purity problems.As far as I know, there are no DAS procedures/registers that deal with the deflection system besides those for geometry and convergence. Still, before you try the static physical adjustments, make sure to back up your current settigs and MPU (defaults reset) your monitor with Windas, then folow the procedures in order. The MPU reset may set registers that are otherwise inaccessible. It doesn't seem too odd to have to adjust the deflection system after replacing one of it's ICs.
I highly doubt this is a white balance problem, I strongly suspect this is a purity problem, and I doubt there are registers that deal with purity, still, try MPUing (defaults reset) the monitor with windas after you backup your settings. I'm interested in knowing how you resolve this, would appreciate a reply. Thank you.
Best regards.
donald wrote:
The following message was sent to you via secured mail form
in reply to your message at Pechorin's audio and video equipment discussion forum:
Hi,
Last weak, my sony GDM500Ps got the deflection problem. I replaced the CXA2043Q and the proglem is fixed. However, after a few minutes, the red color is missing and the green color changed to greenish yellow. But the white color is OK. (That means, the red gun and the green gun is still function, it is the wrong signal processing). It seems the new chip causes the wrong color processing. Do I really need to use the DAS to re-adjust the settings? If so, which parameters must change? Your site does not have the explaination of each parameters so I get difficulty to try. Thanks.
Let me know if I have the wrong idea about this, or if you can fill me in about something. Any links, pointers, or misc. info/observations apreciated.
patrik:
Some monitors do not have a varistor for the G2 voltage on the flyback, or one at all ( the case for many newer sony monitors). My older 17" monitor did though, I wonder about the x-ray protection on it, as it didn't shut istelf down when I maxed out the G2? Scary.
dickhu:
Yeah, another .dat will not turn out very good at all, It's almost as easy to just reset the monitor to default settings. Infact, I'd try that after backing up your original settings.
Thanks for all your help and support! If anyone knows any general CRT information I'd love to hear about it to add it to my howto ( http://www.geocities.com/gregua/windas/ ). I think a section on general CRT concepts would do much to help people diagnose their own problems based on their monitors behavior.
OK! I did that and the screen didnt even jitter, as i moved them up though it did. Is this related to the G2 voltage problem? If so i will solder in a new resistor asap. You mentioned two probes for the fuzzyness, are there two seperate flyback transformers for top and bottom or something of that nature?
Thanks,
_Dan
This is related to the voltage regulation.
You only need to mess with the G2 if your blacks are not true black and appear grey(sometimes with a tinge of green).
Do you have windas software and the needed cable ? I recommend using windas to lower the G2 than messing around with resisters.
Have you adjusted the focus yet? I know i have probably put you off going into the back of your monitor by going an about lethal voltages
Just remmember when you try to take the case off you need to use a flat headed screwdriver to poke into the slits in the top near the front to unhook the tabs otherwise it wont come apart
Was there any improvement in the fuzzines when you lowered the values?
R
Thanks,
_Dan
P.S. I am going to try to open the case of the 21" later, i took the screws out of the bottom and stuck a small screwdriver in the tab holes but the damn thinng wouldnt budge. Any ideas without destroying the case...?
Let me know what model the IBM is and i will let you know if it is any good.
Whatever you do dont twist the screwdriver when its in one of the slots.What you need to do is press down firmly about 1" max into the slot while at the same
time trying to seperate the case from the bezel. when they have seperated stick something in the gap so that when you then move to do the same on the other side the tab doesnt snap back into position.
And hey presto! You have been successful in not terminating the biege beauty's
Natural good looks
R:screwed: SS