[X4U] Monitors appearing washed out [TAN]

[Brett Conlon]

Hi all,

This week I've had the "pleasure" of merging our two design studios into 
one location. I had all the Macs and monitors boxed up and sent to the new 
location.

This afternoon I had a designer working on a temporary G4/500DP (OS9.2.2) 
with a 20" CRT and her Mac and monitors turned up. So I shut the temp Mac 
down, replaced it with her original Mac (also OS9.2.2) and 20" monitor and 
booted it up.

When the screen came on I saw that the black areas were looking washed out 
and quite blue. I checked the colour settings on the monitor and the 
brightness/contrast etc and even Reset the monitor but it just wouldn't 
stop looking washed out.

Thinking that something may have been jiggered in the move I gave up and 
decided to connect up the Temp 20" I had just removed. After rebooting 
with the new 20" connected it now appeared that the Temp monitor was also 
now looking washed out in the blacks but not as blue looking.

"Ah, it's the Video card, then!", you say. There was a second video card 
in there and the monitor also looked washed out when plugged into it.

"Ah, it's the Mac, then!", you say. Well, I brought back the temp Mac and 
plugged it in and the monitor looked washed out still.

"Ah, it's the video card drivers, then!", you say. I tried removing the 
Monitor Preferences, Display Preferences and re-installing the card 
drivers but nothing worked.

"Ah, it's one of the Monitor's guns, then... that's why the blacks looked 
blu-ish!", you say. well, when the Mac shut down and the monitor was 
looking for a sync it would display a dialogue with a red/green/blue bar 
and though they didn't look right they were all clearly red/green and 
blue.

So, I fear that perhaps there may have been something wrong with the 
original Mac (perhaps IT got jiggered on the way over) that has possibly 
blown something in the monitor... could that be possible?

I even tried bringing the monitors into my techo room and connecting it to 
another Mac in there and it still looks extremely washed out. I have to 
have the monitor set to 0% brightness but it still looks really bad. 
Contrast is set to 100%.

I also tried Zapping PRAM but that made no difference. I even tried 
removing and re-seating the video cards.

In the end I connected a Sony 19" LCD and the screen looks fine. The 
blacks are black and everything doesn't look washed out.

Does anyone know of why this may have happened and what is required to get 
these two monitors looking as they did only a short while ago???

I'm hoping it doesn't require a technician.

Your help is most appreciated.

Cheers,

Cojcolds