[apearlma]

I'm having a problem with my 800 Mhz eMac. It has the following effects:
The mac display is now slightly larger than the viewable screen.
The left and right edges are being compressed and the middle is being expanded. Significantly.

Messing around with the display setting, if I move the word 'Edit' at the top of the screen to the far left of the screen, it is half a centimeter - if I move it into the middle, it is .7 centimeters.

Apple Hardware Test CD says there's nothing wrong with the hardware or the GeForce2 card. Anyone seen this before or how to fix it?

Thanks!

[macaddict0001]

It could be a bad display.

[apearlma]

Yeah, that's what I think it might be. But I'm hoping there's another solution...

[macaddict0001]

in the legacy os's there was a geometry setting in the monitor and sound control panel, to my knowledge there is no such thing in osx. Are there any other problems screen wise and other? Have you run the extended test on the hardware test cd?

[drive-thru]

I have the same problem on my Iiyama 17" FST. The left hand side is compressed near the edge and the right hand side is expanded near the edge. I only noticed it a few months ago, so I'm not sure whether it has always been like that or has developed over time. I think it might be a problem which occurs with some flat CRT displays, it's not meant to be like that anyway. If you're worried about it then call Apple (is your eMac under warranty/Apple Care?).

[apearlma]

There is a geometry setting in OSX preferences - but you can't control that aspect of it. The mac screen is slightly larger than the viewable screen area on the default factory settings.

The effect happened quite suddenly. One second normally, the next screwed up. A game I was playing crashed(Neverwinter:Hordes)

The computer is usable for most things, but in terms of design, it is not. Which makes it a bit of a problem. Didn't get Applecare as it cost about 1/5 the price of the machine and I upgrade every year and a half. I did run the extended test and it seemed to think it was fine(and the distortion showed up when booting from that disk - the mouse cursor was how I could tell)

I have another machine to do design from, and that machine is intended to be my primary machine, but this is going to mess with the resale value...

Is there a way to reset the PRAM in OSX?

[macaddict0001]

to reset pram in osx hold command+option+p+r when rebooting. if it is successful you will hear the startup chime 3 times(I think)
I don't think that will help much but you can try it anyway, it won't hurt anything because all it really does is empty preferences not stored on the hard disk when the computer is off, such as time and date.

Oh and I wasn't aware that os x had geometry setting maybe you could enlighten me.

[apearlma]

It is in the displays setting. At least for my eMac using 10.3.5. There's a button for geometry. It might be based on the monitor being used - I'm on an Apple Studio display monitor right now, and it doesn't have the same thing.

Thanks for the pram tip. I'm pretty certain you're right about it. The odd thing about my particular problem is that it looks like it could be controlled via software.

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
to reset pram in osx hold command+option+p+r when rebooting. if it is successful you will hear the startup chime 3 times(I think)
I don't think that will help much but you can try it anyway, it won't hurt anything because all it really does is empty preferences not stored on the hard disk when the computer is off, such as time and date.

Oh and I wasn't aware that os x had geometry setting maybe you could enlighten me.

[macaddict0001]

then it is based on the type of screen, which makes sense.