Author Topic: How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???  (Read 10810 times)

Dariusz Piatkowski

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How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???
« on: September 12, 2015, 11:59:47 pm »
Samsung 245T LCD panel here..ATI X850 XTPE card, SNAP Build 505.

My monitor has been acting up lately coming out of sleep mode...basicaly the screen flashes rapidly several times, sort of a very quick ON/OFF type of a thing...monitor is somewhat old, so I'm thinking probably getting to it's EOL. Still...having said that, it works great once powered up...so I though I'd just bite the bullet and shut OFF the DPMS function so that it does not go into sleep mode.

And here lies the problem...DPMS is shut OFF in the Screen object...SNAP LOG confirms DPSM is OFF, yet the monitor keeps on going into sleep mode. I even remmed out the APM.ADD driver, but that did not help.

Unfortunatley I do not have a way to disable DPMS on the LCD itself, nor could I find this in the service menu either...so I have to find a way from within the OS/2 box.

For the life of me, and maybe I just forgot how to do this, I can not figure out how to shut this off on my W4.52 CP2 machine. So what am I missing here?

Thanks!

ivan

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Re: How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2015, 12:13:32 am »
I don't think there are any other places where the monitor can be shut off unless you have some form of screen saver working in the background that you have forgotten about.

If you don't have a screen saver the next thing is to check the time it takes to switch off the back lights on the panel.  If the time varies then the problem is most probably a capacitor in the lighting inverter has started to dry out or may be leaking.  I have seen this on several older LCD monitors and it is usually fixed by replacing one or more of the electrolytic capacitors in the inverter and power supply.

Dave Yeo

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Re: How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???
« Reply #2 on: September 13, 2015, 02:40:49 am »
If you have DPMS disabled in the desktop properties -->Sceensaver page 2, possibly your BIOS has a setting for putting the monitor to sleep so check that.
Wish Panorama actually supported DPMS or SNAP supported 1680x1050 on this graphics chip :(

Andi B.

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Re: How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???
« Reply #3 on: September 13, 2015, 11:13:32 am »
I never got DPMS off working on my machine with X300 and SNAP. So I use my own compiled blackout (black.exe) for this job. On the second machine with Panorama DPMS off does not work too. I ever wonder if this works for any other...

Could it be you're using blackout package too (or similar) and forgot you installed it?

Another option maybe your bios switches video off. Although I only saw such options with Notebooks it maybe worth to check.

Paul Smedley

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Re: How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???
« Reply #4 on: September 13, 2015, 11:48:17 am »
Hi Dariusz,

Samsung 245T LCD panel here..ATI X850 XTPE card, SNAP Build 505.

My monitor has been acting up lately coming out of sleep mode...basicaly the screen flashes rapidly several times, sort of a very quick ON/OFF type of a thing...monitor is somewhat old, so I'm thinking probably getting to it's EOL. Still...having said that, it works great once powered up...so I though I'd just bite the bullet and shut OFF the DPMS function so that it does not go into sleep mode.

And here lies the problem...DPMS is shut OFF in the Screen object...SNAP LOG confirms DPSM is OFF, yet the monitor keeps on going into sleep mode. I even remmed out the APM.ADD driver, but that did not help.

Unfortunatley I do not have a way to disable DPMS on the LCD itself, nor could I find this in the service menu either...so I have to find a way from within the OS/2 box.

For the life of me, and maybe I just forgot how to do this, I can not figure out how to shut this off on my W4.52 CP2 machine. So what am I missing here?

Thanks!

If you want to save the monitor, http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Samsung-245T-Monitor-Repair-Kit-Capacitors-Only-Not-Entire-Board-/330870337643 is probably a good option :) As others have mentioned, the failure mode is almost certainly bad capacitors on the power supply board.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???
« Reply #5 on: September 13, 2015, 03:26:00 pm »
Thanks for all the responses.

Yeah, I used to use BlankIt a while back...but no longer do as something else replaced it...LOL...meaning I probably got the DPMS function working somehow...LOL...

The 2nd page of Screen properties has DPMS disabled. I actualy did a command line check against the SNAP logs in case the 2nd display head settings was somehow messing around with this. I do not actualy have a 2nd LCD attached at the moment, but tried it a while back and since my video card supports it SNAP always reports back on the 2 heads anyways.

Here is what I find in the log:

=== START ===

Global options for all devices:
  Force VBE Fallback ...... Off
  Force VGA Fallback ...... Off
  Allow non-certified ..... On
  Disable write combining . Off
  Use BIOS for LCD panel... Auto
  Shared AGP memory size... 4096 KB
  Use system memory driver. Off
  Disable DDC detection.... Off
  Virtual Display.......... Off
....
Graphics device configuration:
  Manufacturer......... ATI
  Chipset.............. Radeon X850 Series
  Bus Type............. PCI Express
  Memory............... 262144 KB
  DAC.................. ATI Internal 24 bit DAC
  Clock................ ATI Internal Clock
  Memory Clock......... 400 MHz
  Default Memory Clock. 400 MHz
  Maximum Memory Clock. 400 MHz
  Driver Revision...... 3.2, Build 29
  Driver Build......... Sep 25 2006
  Certified Version.... 1.60
  Certified Date....... Sep 25 2006

Graphics device options:
  Invert .................. Off
  Rotation ................ Off
  Flipped ................. Off
  Prefer 16 bit per pixel.. On
  Prefer 32 bit per pixel.. On
  PCI bus mastering........ On
  Hardware acceleration.... Full
...
Configuration for head 0:

Monitor configuration:
  Manufacturer... Samsung
  Model.......... SyncMaster
  Max Resolution. 1920x1440
  Max HScan...... 81 KHz
  Max VScan...... 75 Hz
  Features....... Wide

LCD panel detected:
  Width:  1920
  Height: 1200
...
Configuration for head 1:

Monitor configuration:
  Manufacturer... Samsung
  Model.......... SyncMaster
  Max Resolution. 1920x1440
  Max HScan...... 81 KHz
  Max VScan...... 75 Hz
  Features....... Wide

=== END ===

Previously the "configuration for head x:" would actually show DPMS as well.

You know, at some point in time I could have sworn that XWorkplace somehow introduced a "screen saver" option somewhere...for some reason I keep on thinking there even was an option to control when the sleep would start up, so along the lines of what Win platform does...man, maybe I'm just confusing stuff...LOL...

BIOS...well, I looked through all the options...ACPI is the only active option I have...if I disable that then there is no boot, which makes sense.

Paul,
Thanks...I'm going to research the capacitor replacement further...it might be the only option...although just yesterday I stopped at the local BestBuy (electronics chain) and found a Samsung 4K LCD on sale, as in down to $425 from $595...resolution of 3840 x 2160, can you imagine that baby??? LOL It actually reminded me of an old 1920x1200 x4 (4 panel) configurations one could find back in the early days of "big" LCD panels.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???
« Reply #6 on: September 13, 2015, 04:57:44 pm »
FOUND IT!!!

OK, at a loss of where to go next I figured I'd do a brute force search through the registry...so off I went looking for DPMS in hopes that if I am in fact running something else or have done an install of a module to handle this, the developer may have used the "dpms" term....and indeed....I hit the proverbial GOLD VEIN here...

So...I have an app called "Doodle's Screen Saver v1.8" installed (http://dssaver.netlabs.org), this shows up as SSaver entry. Indeed, this executes a DPMS sleep command and of all places you can find it in the Desktop=>Properties=>ScreenSaver tab as it replaces the standard "Lockup" functionality.

For now, I have turned off DPMS, waiting to see the results...and looking at Paul's capacitor fix suggestion in the meantime.

Thanks again everyone...I will update the post once I confirm this was in fact the setting.

ivan

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Re: How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???
« Reply #7 on: September 13, 2015, 05:45:11 pm »
So I was correct at the beginning  ;)

The fact that when it starts up again you get the blinking does point to a capacitor problem.  If you want to do it yourself PM me and I will e-mail you the service manual - we have repaired a few of these in the past although we get our capacitors from RS.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: How to turn OFF monitor DPMS ???
« Reply #8 on: September 13, 2015, 06:55:55 pm »
Hi Ivan,

So I was correct at the beginning  ;)

Indeed  sir  ;D ...the problem was in figuring out this was not an EXE that was started up, rather it was a module install into the WPS.

The fact that when it starts up again you get the blinking does point to a capacitor problem.  If you want to do it yourself PM me and I will e-mail you the service manual - we have repaired a few of these in the past although we get our capacitors from RS.

I will take you up on that offer...if I had any local electronics supply stores I would gladly take the capacitors out and just go shopping for the matching replacements, not sure if RS (I assume RadioShack will carry this, their stuff is bare-bones around here really)...but I suppose this will actually translate to some on-line shopping...