problem.. Can anyone think of whats wrong?

[Matrixxx]

Well, I decided that I wanted to be able to hook up my laptop (tangent shuttle 6700) Pentium 4 256 ram GeForce420 (its something like that, i dunno) up to the Tv via S-video. I went to Wal-mart and bought an S-video cable to connect the two. After hooking it into both the TV and the laptop, nothing happened! I put it onto the video 1 mode on the tv, channel 3, still nothing. When i hit the 'Fn' button and f5, instead of the tv showing whats on my computer, my computer screen just goes black. And when it goes black, i dont know how to get the screen to do its job again, so i am forced to restart the computer. I also tried going into my display settings and tinkering w/ them, but no luck. Btw, in the display settings, there is something called n-view, which i guess is the thing that lets you use multiple monitors or connect to a tv. When i choose the Clone one, i got an error message saying that some desk. cpl or something like that didnt work. If you dont know what im talking about, go into 'display' then settings, then advanced, and n-view should be under there. Im probably just an idiot, so if anyone knows what i am doing wrong, PLEASE help! Thanks, all advice is much appreciated. Thanks guys. (sorry for the long and drawn out discription)

[converge]

I am not fortunate enough to have a newer nvidia card, however.. if it is anything like most cards with TV-out, you should be able to enable this under the advanced settings area of your display settings. Keep in mind that your TV will not likely be able to handle that nice crisp 1600x1200 res. you use on your box... more likely 800x600, if not an older model TV that does 640x480...

The function key is used exclusively for switching between video modes for using the VGA output on the back of your system. (ie, lcd, lcd & vga-out, or vga-out)

[Matrixxx]

Thanks for the info, uhh, one thing though, maybe its my computers fault, maybe mine, but when i do the Function key and the F5, it doesnt seem to cycle through those modes. If i do it once, the screen goes blank, and if i do it any amount of times after the first, it stays blank (doesnt seem to do anything) Is this my computer? Do you know what possibly could be the cause of this? Thanks again.

[rusty]

Since when?

Maybe I'm missing the point here, but since when did the forum for the worlds largest hacker convention turn into a support forum for problem windows hardware problems?

I'd suggest downloding the latest drivers and control panel from http://www.nvidia.com and if that doesn't work contact the laptop vendor.

OR

Maybe the cable is propietary, and you need to purchase it from them.

[Matrixxx]

well rusty, why not ask any computer questions on the forum? Someone may have the answer, and those who do not feel like answering them are not forced to. I dunno, just doesnt seem like its that bad of a thing to do??, but yeah, thanks for the info, maybe you have a point about the hacker thing, but yeah =) think of it as "hacking into my TV" =)

[octalpus]

Re: Since when?

Originally posted by rusty
Maybe I'm missing the point here, but since when did the forum for the worlds largest hacker convention turn into a support forum for problem windows hardware problems?

Did you happen to notice the subject of this particular forum? It's "Got Questions?". It's not "Got Questions about Defcon?". It's not "Got Questions that a small minority deem appropriate?". It's simply "Got Questions?". If something gets off topic, we'll put the smackdown on it and send it on the redeye to /dev/null. If you don't have something to contribute to the thread, STFU.

This would be a really fucking boring forum if it was all Defcon talk, all the time.

[encrypt31945]

I am glad we can post technical questions here because we can't do defcon stuff with our computers messed up.

[vAd0r]

Output to tv

Make sure you have the S-Video cable pluged into your laptop before you turn in on. Sometimes I have to do that. After your box boots up hold Fn and hit display at the top.

vAd0r Out

[skroo]

Re: problem.. Can anyone think of whats wrong?

Originally posted by Matrixxx
When i hit the 'Fn' button and f5, instead of the tv showing whats on my computer, my computer screen just goes black.

This may be entirely the correct behavior for what you're describing. I'm not completely convinced of this, but consider the following:

- Is the SVGA cable to the TV good? Have you tried replacing it with another one?

- Does the machine have SVGA out? If so, is there a setting to power down the LCD on SVGA out, possibly in the BIOS?

- Have BIOS power management settings been changed in such as to potentially cause the LCD to not come back from a sleep mode? Are you running the most current BIOS? If you are, does it work in an older BIOS revision (danger: may break other things)?

- Have you tested this against another of the same model, perhaps a display unit at the store you bought it from? If it exhibits different behaviour, you may have a damaged OS or possibly even bad hardware.

Good luck... These sorts of things can be really frustrating to track down.

[ck3k]

Hey,

well i happen to have a neato nvidia card...the 4200 8x agp, watercooled :D anyways, the tv out thing sometimes is disabled in the nvidia drivers, or there is an issue with the cable, make sure it is connected solidly in the back of the computer both ways, also make sure it is in the video slot of the tv, i have messed that one up before, also sometimes newer drivers give better results, and there are some tv-apps out there i used to have one, but the new nvidia drivers make all good, If you still have the problem i will get some screenshots on here with my machnine. Course the one thing that hasnt been asked what os? or maybe it has, cause i dunno about the nvidia linux drivers, i have had some issues in the past.