[tramahound]

I have an old G4 500mhz powermac at work that I was given which works fine for what i do on it. I run it to my 20-inch crt at a fairly low 1158-ish resolution via vga. Today our returns department gave up on trying to send back a brandy new 20-inch aluminum ACD (couldn't return it because it was open and the customer didn't send back the manuals) and offered it to me to use with my Mac. I giddily accepted but came to find that my measely 16mb gpu could not handle the display's native resolution. What is the cheapest and lowest level gpu I could buy to put in the G4 that might make it able to push the necessary 1600x1058 or whatever it is resolution?
thanks

[zerostar]

what was the problem? I remember using a 20" on a 16MB card before, or am I crazy?

The 20" runs at 1680 x 1050, you need a NVIDIA card or a Radeon 7500 or better.

What model G4 is it? the single 500 had AGP, is yours single or dual?

A Radeon 9200 is $130, that is a PCI card with DVI that should support the resolution just fine, but maybe someone can confirm?

[tramahound]

it would boot, I could see the gray apple logo and spinning circle, then the screen would go black and stay that way. I connected it to a friend's G5 1.6 and it worked fine as wine.
My G4 is the single 500mhz model.

[P]

Try resetting the PRAM. Your computer may simply be set to a resolution the new monitor cannot handle, while the G5 was set to a better resolution. The Mac has no ability to sense what monitor is connected to it.

[tramahound]

tried the pram. it does the same thing. I can see the gray apple screen, but once it goes beyond that the monitor goes black and the white led comes on...

[zerostar]

try booting into open firmware option+apple+o+f at startup
do reset-nvram (return) reset-all (return)

see if that clears the settings...

is your CRT VGA? If so you can try booting with both connected and play with it from there...

[tramahound]

it's VGA, but the way the plugs are made they don't both fit at the same time. I tried that. I can give the open firmware a try though.

[zerostar]

Originally Posted by tramahound

it's VGA, but the way the plugs are made they don't both fit at the same time. I tried that. I can give the open firmware a try though.

Ok let me know, I will see what cards I have here, perhaps we can do a swap if I have something that will work, all our G4s are headless servers anyway and I have a sweet 13" CRT that we hookup in an emergency.

Let me check what I have....

[tramahound]

it's VGA, but the way the plugs are made they don't both fit at the same time. I tried that. I can give the open firmware a try though.

[zerostar]

I have a Geforce 2MX card with VGA and ADC only so I don't know if that would work. Also a Geforce 4MX with the same ports...

[tramahound]

i tried the open firmware reset and get the same results. damn. I would so hate seeing a PC running this thing which is what's going to happen otherwise!

[zerostar]

I am pretty much out of ideas, perhaps someone can chime in with some help...

[tramahound]

Yeah, I think so too. Thanks for all the help though.

[zerostar]

If you find out if one of those cards will work let me know and ill hook you up. PM is probably the best way to reach me.

k later.

[reader50]

I'm thinking it is your video card defaulting to a resolution/refresh rate the flat panel does not support. Not surprising since it's most likely a Rage 128 Pro, and that particular resolution wasn't common when the card was made. Borrow a PCI video card (even an old one will do) so you can boot with both monitors connected. Put the VGA monitor on the PCI video card.

Boot first with only the VGA connected, so the menubar will get moved to that display. In the Monitors preference pane, check the box to show Monitors in the menu bar. Set the number of recent items in the menu to the max, 10.

Plug the LCD in and choose Detect Displays from the menu. The preference pane will acquire an Arrangement tab showing the 2nd display. Click the "Gather Windows" button, all the Monitors prefpane windows will be collected together on that display - Monitors opens a separate prefpane copy for each display when there are more than one.

Grab the Display 2 prefpane, and choose a resolution/refresh rate that works.

If your version of OSX doesn't offer the Gather Displays button in the Monitors prefpane, then try the Monitors menu in the menu bar. If you're lucky, it will offer a resolution for Display 2 that will work. If not, you need to use the mouse to "fish" on the other display for the prefpane. Try to grab the title bar and drag it onto the VGA monitor. This might take awhile. Using the menubar to set Display 2 to the lowest resolution offered will help, since the prefpane doesn't resize. Gives you a relatively bigger target.

[zerostar]

Actually if you turn on remote desktop, then hook up the LCD and let the machine boot up, you can connect to it using something free like "Chicken of the VNC" to get to the monitors preference pane, once you set it to 1680X1050 it should come on, you might need to reboot i forget.

This is how I set my g4's up as headless machines with higher than 640x480 res. for the remote stations.

Worth a shot and pretty easy to do, I think a PC VNC program would work too if you only have PCs available.

If you need further instructions just ask, but this might work without too much trouble.

[P]

Try booting with another screen attached, setting the resolution to 640*480@60 Hz (VGA standard) or 1024*768 (XGA standard) or some other common resolutuion and then switching monitors without rebooting. If that works, you can then switch the resolution to what ever is the recommended for that screen.