My MagInnovision DJ530 hasn't been well since I got it a year ago.  I run
Xfree on it (on Linux), and it runs nominally ok, but has some freakiness
from time to time.  Last night, running X, the screen suddenly darkened
much, and reminiscent of cubistic art, got really strange, and the displayed
part narrowed radically.  I switched to a text console and the useable
screen image was narrow and tall, about 65% of normal width.
And especially BOLD print seemed to shimmer, and was blurry, although normal
type seemed ok.

(I use a 132 x 50 screen, by the way, and am running a Matrox Millenium 4MB
model.)

I shut the monitor down (I leave my machine up for a couple of days at least
at a time, but usually power the monitor down) and came back to it this
morning.  After I got over the feeling in the pit of my stomach, I turned it
on, to see the same thing.  I did some work, and then, against my better
instinct, proceeded to fire up X windows again.

On switching to X the monitor died, and with it any thought it might be the
adaptor...  It just turned all black, and the power light won't even come up
anymore.  It's rightly dead.

I know I'm condemned.  This monitor came, over a year ago, from the US by US
Priority Mail with a corner of the box crushed in.  The monitor displayed
the image crooked (about 3-5 degrees off level), but I lived with it.  (And
curiously, when I moved the monitor to a new house, about 8 months ago, it
came a bit more level!).  Beside that the monitor worked ok, so rather then
send the monitor back, even though it was insured, I decided to live with
it, rather than suffer an additional months's long wait. Last week I finally
contacted MagInnovision about a behavior in X---trailing off of vertical
lines or edges, with some colors, are sometimes streaks looking like the
smearing of a line of not dry ink.  Someone at Mag tech support suggests the
problem may be in monitor, perhaps the microprocessor.

Alot of rambling.   I know I'll be damned.  Luckily I have this 12"
monochrome monitor and a mono card.

By the way, I had just installed a Soundblaster Value16pnp sound card two
days earlier.


Wondering if this makes sense to anyone.  Looks like a trip to the
manufacturer.  I'd spend the money for a repair, if I could get it fixed for
less than 50-60.00.  If I get a clue, it may help make the decision.


Alan Davis

--
Alan E. Davis               Marianas High School (Science Dept)
AAA196, Box 10001           [log in to unmask]
Saipan, MP  96950           15.16oN 145.7oE    GMT+10
Northern Mariana Islands    http://www.saipan.netpci.com/~adavis