Now that I finally have a working VGA console with the dreaded Microsoft 
proprietary Blue Screen of Death background, I have a slight problem. The 
first column seems too far to the left and the charaters are partly formed 
off-screen.

This is with a Radeon 7500 card on DS10L.  Is this normal with nothing that 
can be done to resolve this ? Or are there steps that can be taken to make 
the console more readable ?

On Nov 7, 7:24 am, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam...@teksavvy.com> wrote:
> Now that I finally have a working VGA console with the dreaded Microsoft
> proprietary Blue Screen of Death background, I have a slight problem. The
> first column seems too far to the left and the charaters are partly formed
> off-screen.
>
> This is with a Radeon 7500 card on DS10L.  Is this normal with nothing that
> can be done to resolve this ? Or are there steps that can be taken to make
> the console more readable ?

And you have no way of adjusting the monitor?

Dave

David B Sneddon wrote:
> And you have no way of adjusting the monitor?

If I tell the monitor to not scale the signal, I get a 640*480 blue square 
in the middle of the display. And in that unscaled image, it is also clear 
that the first column of text begins just left of the blue background and 
hence truncated.

In other words, it appears that it is the signal itself which contains the 
truncated characters, not the physical LCD display hiding parts of the image.

> > And you have no way of adjusting the monitor?
>
> If I tell the monitor to not scale the signal, I get a 640*480 blue square
> in the middle of the display. And in that unscaled image, it is also clear
> that the first column of text begins just left of the blue background and
> hence truncated.
>
> In other words, it appears that it is the signal itself which contains the
> truncated characters, not the physical LCD display hiding parts of the image.

This sounds like you're  using an LCD monitor. Scaling is often done
after timing signals are interpreted, and the timing is porbably the
problem here. Can you try this with an old-fashioned CRT monitor?

Camiel.

OK, I played around, rebooting my alpha. Perhaps it was my initial view of 
the VGA console that was screwed up because after a few resets, (>>> 
INITIALIZE) the console display would have the leftmost pixel of letters at 
the very edge of the BSOD background.

If the background had remained black, then the letters would appear to be 
"complete" since the black areas left of the displayable screen would 
complement the black background.

But because of the Microsoft BSOD background which ends right at the 
leftmost pixel of the column 1 letters, those letters are harder to make out.

And BTW, when the console initially starts, it is white on black for the 
first message, after which it unfortunatly switches to the Microsoft BSOD mode.

Also, after having resetted the SRM a few times, I was also able to get the 
composite video port to output the VGA display. So I can see the console on 
my TV. (and capture it on my mac).

And once DECWidnows switches to 1280*1024, the composite output continues 
to spew out a signal, however it is no longer in NTSC size/timing so a 
normal TV set only see jibberish.

Now if I could only figure out how to make the card/console remain in white 
on black mode instead of switching to white on Microsoft BSOD mode after 
the first message.

JF Mezei wrote:
> OK, I played around, rebooting my alpha. Perhaps it was my initial view of
> the VGA console that was screwed up because after a few resets, (>>>
> INITIALIZE) the console display would have the leftmost pixel of letters at
> the very edge of the BSOD background.
>
> If the background had remained black, then the letters would appear to be
> "complete" since the black areas left of the displayable screen would
> complement the black background.
>
> But because of the Microsoft BSOD background which ends right at the
> leftmost pixel of the column 1 letters, those letters are harder to make out.
>
> And BTW, when the console initially starts, it is white on black for the
> first message, after which it unfortunatly switches to the Microsoft BSOD mode.
>
> Also, after having resetted the SRM a few times, I was also able to get the
> composite video port to output the VGA display. So I can see the console on
> my TV. (and capture it on my mac).
>
> And once DECWidnows switches to 1280*1024, the composite output continues
> to spew out a signal, however it is no longer in NTSC size/timing so a
> normal TV set only see jibberish.
>
> Now if I could only figure out how to make the card/console remain in white
> on black mode instead of switching to white on Microsoft BSOD mode after
> the first message.

On all the Alphas that I've owned/seen the white on black is the video
card's own bios going through initialzation.  Even on systems with
built-in video chips like the AlphaServer 800's.  You very briefly see
the bios version, etc then the SRM takes over and puts up the VGA blue
(There are only 16 colors to choose from so I guess we just got "lucky"
that MS chose the same color for the BSOD background) background.
AFAIK you can't change that.  FredK would know better about that.

On the clipping problem, I have Samsung LCD's which have an "Auto"
button for adjusting the screen to a particular analog VGA signal.  If
you're using a LCD then perhaps there is a way to make it adjust also.

  John H. Reinhardt

<johnhreinhardt@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1162905262.558451.299340@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>
> JF Mezei wrote:
> > OK, I played around, rebooting my alpha. Perhaps it was my initial view
of
> > the VGA console that was screwed up because after a few resets, (>>>
> > INITIALIZE) the console display would have the leftmost pixel of letters
at
> > the very edge of the BSOD background.
> >
> > If the background had remained black, then the letters would appear to
be
> > "complete" since the black areas left of the displayable screen would
> > complement the black background.
> >
> > But because of the Microsoft BSOD background which ends right at the
> > leftmost pixel of the column 1 letters, those letters are harder to make
out.
> >
> > And BTW, when the console initially starts, it is white on black for the
> > first message, after which it unfortunatly switches to the Microsoft
BSOD mode.
> >
> > Also, after having resetted the SRM a few times, I was also able to get
the
> > composite video port to output the VGA display. So I can see the console
on
> > my TV. (and capture it on my mac).
> >
> > And once DECWidnows switches to 1280*1024, the composite output
continues
> > to spew out a signal, however it is no longer in NTSC size/timing so a
> > normal TV set only see jibberish.
> >
> > Now if I could only figure out how to make the card/console remain in
white
> > on black mode instead of switching to white on Microsoft BSOD mode after
> > the first message.
>
> On all the Alphas that I've owned/seen the white on black is the video
> card's own bios going through initialzation.  Even on systems with
> built-in video chips like the AlphaServer 800's.  You very briefly see
> the bios version, etc then the SRM takes over and puts up the VGA blue
> (There are only 16 colors to choose from so I guess we just got "lucky"
> that MS chose the same color for the BSOD background) background.
> AFAIK you can't change that.  FredK would know better about that.
>
> On the clipping problem, I have Samsung LCD's which have an "Auto"
> button for adjusting the screen to a particular analog VGA signal.  If
> you're using a LCD then perhaps there is a way to make it adjust also.
>

The SRM guys decided to stick with the familiar white on blue, and I
followed suit...  it could have been any two of 16 million colors - I guess
the familiarity of the color scheme was the deciding factor.  It "could"
change it when VMS runs... but what would be the point?  The driver's VGA
console mode reads the VGA state and tries to preserve the original timing
from the SRM/BIOS.  Most multi-sync monitors have a means of being adjusted
manually if the timing is off.