EMAC has half-screen disease...

[yellowbox]

My eMac worked just fine, then I UPS'd it and it worked in it's new home for about a week. Then one day I turned it on and the screen was messed up. What should have been the bottom of the desktop image was about half way up the monitor with the upper half unviewable above the top of the screen. The image was also keystoned (warped) toward the bottom and had wavy lines moving through it. Somebody told me it was my video card. Wonder if anybody knows about this. Could it be from shipping? Can it be fixed without replacing the mother board? Any info or tips you have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

.t.w.

 

[trainguy77]

Scary, try resetting your PRAM, does it do this right from boot-up?

 

[skoker]

It's called keystone correction. You may have to open it up and turn some of the dials to correct this if you can't in system prefs

 

[Macmaniac]

If playing around with the settings do not fix it you may have to replace the entire tube assembly, I have seen this problem before caused by the tube. Something has been knocked out of alignment. The tube assembly runs at least $200.

 

[ryannel2003]

OMG Raster Shift Returns!

My eMac worked just fine, then I UPS'd it and it worked in it's new home for about a week. Then one day I turned it on and the screen was messed up. What should have been the bottom of the desktop image was about half way up the monitor with the upper half unviewable above the top of the screen. The image was also keystoned (warped) toward the bottom and had wavy lines moving through it. Somebody told me it was my video card. Wonder if anybody knows about this. Could it be from shipping? Can it be fixed without replacing the mother board? Any info or tips you have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

.t.w.

Damn this really sucks. What you have is called Raster Shift, and this affected mostly 1st Generation eMacs w/ nVidia graphics cards. This will not go away and cannot be fixed that easily. Here is a Yahoo Group that is dedicated to this problem (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apple_emac/). As you can see, the picture on the home page shows exactly what you have. The cheapest way to fix this would be to buy a IVAD Cable off eBay or another website that sells them. I do not recommend you install this yourself, because being around a CRT Monitor is extremely dangerous and can lead to serious injury or even death. I recommend you take this to closest computer repair shop or Apple Store and have them check this out for you. Once again, I'm sorry that this has happened to your eMac. Unfortunate problem with nVidia graphics eMacs. 🙁

 

[yellowbox]

The Raster Shift....

I apologize for not keeping up with this thread and thanks guys for all of the help and suggestions. I did some research on it after I posted and found out a little bit more about the raster shift. 😕 ryannel2003, you're right. I've been cursed with the first gen IVAD cable replacers. Did Mac ever give emac users an option to either recall or offer to pay for the maintanance? I guess all I can do for now is get the IVAD cable replaced, right? Well, thank you all again for your help!

.t.

 

[ryannel2003]

I apologize for not keeping up with this thread and thanks guys for all of the help and suggestions. I did some research on it after I posted and found out a little bit more about the raster shift. 😕 ryannel2003, you're right. I've been cursed with the first gen IVAD cable replacers. Did Mac ever give emac users an option to either recall or offer to pay for the maintanance? I guess all I can do for now is get the IVAD cable replaced, right? Well, thank you all again for your help!

.t.

Wow I completely forgot about this thread! I'm really sorry to bring it up again! I do think Apple would let you send the eMac's back in and replace the screen and motherboard or something! However this was back in 2002-2003 so that program is long gone. However if you want to keep your eMac alive, I recommend you get a new IVAD cable and get a repair shop to fix it for you. After that, it should help fix the raster shift problem. Hope you get this fixed! 🙂