weird ghosting of characters in X

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Thu Apr 28 20:51:47 UTC 2005


On Thu, Apr 28, 2005 at 04:19:08PM -0400, Matt Price wrote:
> all of a sudden (about 10 minutes ago) my monitor started producing
> ghostly echos of the characters it displays.  So, if I type 
> 
> linux
> 
> a white streak, itslef composed of indiviual whitish lines is
> displayed just to the right of the word there.  You can see an example
> at http://www.derailleur.org/.configfiles/root.png

Well certainly that image doesn't appear to have any problems, although
of course if viewed on the 'broken' monitor I imagine it would show the
problem.

> what a pain!  I'm finding it really hard to see.  I don't see any
> errors reported in /var/log/XFree86.0.log -- anyone have any idea what
> causes this kind of thing? 

It is most likely a broken monitor, or broken video card (I have
personally seen this with a TNT2 M64 from a gateway machine a few years
ago, it just suddenly started streaking on the monitor, while switching
to the onboard i815 video worked fine, alhough at lower speed and
resolution).  It streaked even in text mode on that one.

In some cases a bad video driver can screw up the output, although
personally I have only ever seen that on ATI chips and when running
highres on S3 and intel video.

So if possible, try the monitor on anohter machine/video card at the
same resolution and refresh, and if nothing is wrong, try a different
monitor on the video card and see if it streaks.  That should tell you
which to investigate.  If it is the video card, try a different driver
version just in case it is a case of a broken driver release, but most
likely it is a DAC that is going on the video card if the monitor is OK.

Lennart Sorensen
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