16 April 2012

Yeah, it's a Monday ...

Last week, I made a trip up to the local computer store, the mothership of MicroCenter, and finally broke down and bought a USB/VGA four port KVM switch for my lead worksstation .... not DVI or HDMI on the video, but still VGA. The PS/2 mouse and keyboards were scheduled to be phased out, and a move to USB devices slated for this week

Well, the components to be affected .. the old KVM, the panel monitor, and so on must have held a pow-wow across the weekend, because when I came in this morning the panel monitor's backlight (a Westinghouse L2210NW, 1680x1050, datecode of April 2008) seems to be completely dead. This is of course the absolutely MOST inconvenient part of the display chain to die, because I need to run custom 'modeline' detail under X to squeeze the maximum resolution and sharpness out of the display. I had also purchased the three year 'no questions' replacement warranty on that four year old unit, so no help there

I grabbed a 'retired to the front bench' NEC AcuSync LCD223wxm, also nominally 1680x1050, off one of the benches and have been fiddling with the modeline settings to have a backup to limp through the day, but the horizontal height is wrong, the pixels puddgy, and the video muddled

No doubt I _could_ get it to stand up and dance, but the NEC has a datecode from early 2007 so that is a suckers game

Yeah, its a Monday