BYOPC, and User Flash, Windows Logo, and Windows OS can ALL display correctly ?

[mullardel34]

This I did not know... User Flash, Windows Logo, and the Windows OS can ALL display correctly (in win98se). When BYOPC, I had wrongly assumed it could not be done.

Recently, in order to shorten the hours of use on the AGP TV cards in my PC's, I decided to pick up a couple of used ATi 8mb PCI cards.

At post, and at system boot, one of the PCI cards displayed the User flash and the Windows 98 logo, nearly off the screen and at about half-height. I've always overlooked the 1/2 inch black area around these screens when displayed, and ignored these screens even when they displayed off-center. My thoughts were, that when you BYOPC, you must live with a few shortcomings. But this time, the card was in question, so the display had to be corrected.

Unaware of any application for this purpose, I reset the PC while running, so it would boot up and use Scandisk to check all partitions for errors. This gave me time to adjust the monitor while the display was in a basic mode. Afterwards, the Windows 98 logo did display as expected, full-screen and centered.

However, the change did not affect the way the User flash area displayed. Knowing the PC would do a memory check while the User flash area was on-screen, (and needing to extend this duration), I put in as much memory as possible. I then had time to press the buttons on the monitor and make adjustments to the display. I then rebooted and the User flash area displayed correctly.

Note, that adjusting the monitor's display during POST, and also while Scandisk ran during BOOT, did not affect the display in the Windows environment. This left me to believe that there are 3 modes in which these settings are written and stored.

Perhaps someone here can explain this better and recommend an application for making these adjustments ?

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Equipment used. The monitor was a 15" CRT made by IBM. An older monitor, but has all the display adjustments available in current models.

[mullardel34]

UPDATE:

With another identical IBM monitor available, I looked into this further. When the second monitor was installed in place of the first one, it did not know how to display the User flash or Windows Logo correctly. The settings, therefore, were stored in the first monitor.

Apparently, these monitors have a mode for displaying information from each of the 3 data sources; the BIOS, DOS, and Windows. Settings for each display mode are set and stored individually. That is why the black borders and off-center screens when displaying something outside of the Windows environment.