G4 PowerMac monitor color issues

sauced

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Please, be easy on me. I am a recent Mac convert and know nothing of the world of Mac.

Wife uses them for graphics work and the one at home has lost its ability to correctly show colors. According to her, it was a sudden change, but all seems ok in display, just no correct colorations.

Monitor is a Hitachi superscan MC21. System is about 4 years old.

Macs have a video card that can go bad? Any way to test it?

I tried to use the calibration mode in the Mac Help section. The monitor does support Apple Digital Color Technologies, but when prompted to set the contrast and brightness as the system prompts, I could not obtain the oval in the box. I just got the black box.

Any suggestions, or should I find a Mac tech?
 
What version of the Mac OS? Is it Mac OS X or Mac OS Classic (9.x or below)?

Sounds to me like the color depth settings might have changed. It might be set to something like 256 colors or something.

Let us know which version of the Mac OS you are using and we can move on from there.
 
I thank you for your reply!

OS is 9.0.4. Color depth settings, found when opening the monitor control panel is set for 'millions' and it would seem to me that if that were the case, the colors would only be slightly off (for lack of a large enough palatte), not as bad as they are which means that I cant get a flesh tone nearly correct.

Unfortunately, I am travelling to attend a wedding today and will not return until Sunday, the 7th.
 
First order of business I would plug the monitor into any other machine to see if your problem is the monitor or the card. If it is a G4 then the monitor likely has a VGA plug and will work with a PC.
 
This sounds like one of the color guns going out on the monitor. I remember this happening to me with an Apple MultiScan color monitor...the 15 inch one. They were otorious for this. The one I had lost the red and blue guns, bringing me back to the days of the Apple IIe with the green monochrome monitor. ::ha::

Seems like the monitor is on it's way out. Like atomlinson said, test it on another computer and see if you get the same result. If so, then the monitor is your problem. Also check the Mac with another monitor that you know works just in case both the video card and the monitor went bad... :rolleyes:
 
OK, thank you for the guidance. The monitor from my old PC worked just fine when attached to the G4, and when attached to the PC, her monitor looks just as bad. Time to go monitor shopping.

Thanks, I wouldnt have thought that the two monitors were interchangable.
 
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