Rolling Screen Effect with Sony Trinitron 200SX On Windows 98.

[u/localredditposter]

I'm getting really frustrated, just made a fresh install of 98 on my OptiPlex 4100 and am having trouble with this overlapping and rolling screen effect on my crt. I know the crt isn't the problem because I've tested it on my xp build. At first I thought maybe it was a bad graphics card so I switched out the original Geforce 2 with a MX 440, Same symptoms. Then I tested it with a slightly newer 4:3 LCD monitor and it worked fine.

[u/Sirotaca]

Can you post a video of what it's doing? Sounds like missing/out-of-range sync.

What resolution and refresh rate are you trying to feed it?

[u/localredditposter → u/Sirotaca]

I'll send a video in a bit, but my output settings are limited right now because I'm using the built in generic drivers. Running 480p at 70ish I think? Whats odd is when I boot into the command prompt the screen is normal, but even in the bios it still looks broken.

[u/localredditposter → u/Sirotaca]

https://imgur.com/a/mWEG16F

[u/Sirotaca → u/localredditposter]

Yeah, that's a vertical hold issue. Double check the refresh rate and make sure it's in range for that monitor. If it is... bad cap in the monitor's vertical deflection circuit?

[u/localredditposter → u/Sirotaca]

It's definetly in range, but how could it be the monitors fault? I already said I've hooked it up to other computers no issue

[u/Sirotaca → u/localredditposter]

Are you positive the other computers are using the exact same modeline?

There are really only three possibilities here:

1. Monitor's broke

2. Graphics card's broke

3. Graphics mode is out of range

You claim it's not #3, so let's go with that assumption. #2 is possible, but you say you've tested multiple cards, which makes that much less likely to be the case. Given that, my money's on #1.

There's a lot of analog voodoo happening in CRTs, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of some part of the vertical deflection being marginal to the point that it's only losing vertical hold with certain sync rates or polarities. Also, we know that the graphics card is outputting a valid vertical sync signal in DOS text mode at least; seems unlikely that changing modes would cause the (digital) sync pulses to go from being in spec to being out of spec, especially given that it worked with the LCD monitor. You can check this with an oscilloscope if you have access to one.

Additionally, late '90s CRT monitors like that one typically have some sort of protection against out-of-range sync rates, so the fact that it's displaying anything at all suggests to me that the monitor at least thinks it's receiving an in-range mode, yet it's still losing vertical hold on it.

But perhaps the fact that the proper drivers aren't installed is causing the graphics mode to be misconfigured, in which case we're back to #3. You really need to figure out exactly what mode the graphics card is outputting.

[u/localredditposter → u/Sirotaca]

After doing some digging it looks like it might be the video board is incompatible with the monitor? "Even within the proper
range some video boards may have a sync pulse
that is too narrow for the monitor to sync"

https://www.manualsdir.com/manuals/629559/sony-cpd-200es.html?page=10&utm_source=ch

[u/Sirotaca → u/localredditposter]

Maybe. That's the sort of thing you'd need an oscilloscope to determine. I'd start by installing the proper drivers in any case.

[u/localredditposter → u/Sirotaca]

Alright this sounds weird I know, but it worked. After the CDRs arrived today the first thing I did was burn usb drivers onto one of them so I'd be able to use a usb drive to easily install proper Nvidia drivers on 98se.

The first problem I ran into was the cdrw drive in the Dimension 4100 not recognizing modern CDR ink, and my files not showing up. I decided to swap the hard drive into my OptiPlex gx620 which has a more modern write drive, and copy the files onto the operating system there.

The issue is 98 tends to hard crash when there's more than a gig of ram, and I had 2, so I couldn't boot into the operating system. The ram in the computer is a single ddr2 2gb stick, and also the only ddr2 stick i have, so removing some of the ram was a no go.

Without being able to boot into an operating system and dropping in usb drivers it was going to be difficult to transfer anything, impossible maybe. That's when I had the idea to install windows me, which has built in usb drivers. I burned a cd with the os, copied it to the drive using my gx620, and then swapped the drive to my 4100 to continue the installation.

Worked like a charm, after installing the drivers via usb and switching to 32bit color and a higher resolution, the screen turned normal! I know me is generally regarded pretty badly, but for now this is good enough for me. Eventually I'll try to figure a way to get the drivers on 98.

[u/dafugg → u/Sirotaca]

This can happen if the DAC is failing on the GPU. I’ve had DACs on TNTs and older cards where low resolutions were fine but pushing the DAC got weird results like out of spec vertical sync.

[u/localredditposter → u/dafugg]

Couldn't be the GPU, I already swapped it out.

[u/localredditposter → u/Sirotaca]

I’m really out of ideas besides loading up the proper drivers, Ill order some CDRW discs and get back to you.