29-11-2012, 06:27 PM
Hi Col,
I always enjoy your posts
Honestly, I think that you're making the right decision. You have a number of tasks and goals in mind, and your computer is currently an obstacle. For you, learning about computers would be a means to an end. But I can definitely see both sides of this, and it's understandable that those of us with an interest in "vintage" computers might well be tempted to persuade you to upgrade. In your case, your starting point isn't all that great - it's not an especially good motherboard or processor, and the scope for upgrades are relatively limited.
Having said that, if you don't plan to keep the old system, you might like to offer it to people here. Certainly, the RAM will be useful to someone, and perhaps the HDD as well?
Regarding resolution and graphics cards:
I can well understand why you are confused!
Every computer needs a graphics chip - otherwise it wouldn't be able to produce a picture. Now, there was a time when you required a separate card to do this. But sometime around the mid to late 1990s, manufacturers started to integrate the necessary silicon onto the main motherboard. Doing this reduced the cost, of course.
So yes, you do have a graphics "card", logically speaking. But in physical terms, you don't have an actual card that contains just the graphics chip.
Of course, if you wanted to, you can plug in a graphics card of your choosing. At which point, the computer stops using the existing graphics hardware on the motherboard.
Hopefully that clears that up
Onto resolution:
Consider that the display in front of you is actually a piece of graph paper. The individual squares can be filled with whatever colour you like, within reason. Well, you have 16.7 million colours to choose from - including rather more than 50 shades of grey
In fact, if you can find a magnifying glass, you'll see that this is pretty much the case. (Let's ignore the RGB sub-elements for now.)
So, these little squares are called "pixels", as I'm sure you know.
OK - resolution is simply the amount of pixels. Your graphics card can be configured to produce a number of different sizes - and 1024 by 768 is the size you're currently using. It's a very common choice.
In the CRT days, when you changed resolution, your monitor changed the number of lines displayed automatically to match the resolution that the graphics card was producing. No-doubt that you'll also have the option of 640 by 480, and 800 by 600, and selecting these caused the line and field time-bases to run at different rates.
But, the joy of CRT monitors is that this process worked flawlessly. No distortion or artefacts were produced - apart from perhaps being able to see the line structure on a low resolution mode.
In effect, as you changed resolution, you were changing the size of the squares on your sheet of graph paper. The image always filled the screen, but in high resolution modes, you had more squares on the paper, but they were smaller squares. If you went for a lower resolution mode, you had fewer squares, but they were bigger. As I say, CRTs coped with this admirably...
Now, you have an LCD monitor.
Unlike CRTs, an LCD panel is actually a piece of graph paper. It has its own pixels...
Now we have a problem. What happens if your graphics card is using a different piece of graph paper?
If you have access to two different pieces of graph paper, you can try this for yourself. I have some at home which is 0.1", and I also have some which is 2mm. Put these on top of each other and hold them up to the light. You'll see that you'll never get them to line up.
I'm sure that makes sense. If so, please understand that this is the problem you have now.
So that the picture is usable, your LCD monitor will be trying to scale the signal from your graphics chip so that it fills the screen. But, your display has many more pixels than the graph paper in the graphics chip - there is no easy way to match things up. So, if your computer is trying to illuminate a single pixel at the middle of the screen, your display will actually illuminate several all at once. Moreover, it will actually illuminate some of them at a lower brightness level, which in effect blurs the pixel that is illuminated. As unlikely as it sounds, this is actually preferable to the alternative, but the net effect is that the overall picture is very soft indeed - almost like a de-focussed CRT.
So, when you get your new computer (or graphics card), you need to find out how many pixels your monitor has, and make sure the graphics card is outputting the same. In other words, the graph paper the graphics card is using needs to be the same as the monitor has. In practice, this will almost certainly happen automatically, because the monitor and computer will talk to each other as the computer boots up. It's not happening now because your aged graphics chip is unable to output the correct signal, but this is really unusual.
You might find that text and other items on screen seem a bit too small when this has correctly taken place. If so, come back for advice. Because, rather than asking the graphics card to change its graph paper - an approach which was fine in the CRT days - we need to ask Windows to draw the text at a larger font size. There is a setting for this, and it works very well indeed - you get the best of all worlds - nice sharp, crisp displays, yet really fine detail when needed.
It's a shame you're not local, because I could have popped around and demonstrated all of this in the time it's taken me to write it all. Once seen, it really is obvious and very understandable. You'll see what I mean when you get that new computer
All the best,
Mark
I always enjoy your posts
Honestly, I think that you're making the right decision. You have a number of tasks and goals in mind, and your computer is currently an obstacle. For you, learning about computers would be a means to an end. But I can definitely see both sides of this, and it's understandable that those of us with an interest in "vintage" computers might well be tempted to persuade you to upgrade. In your case, your starting point isn't all that great - it's not an especially good motherboard or processor, and the scope for upgrades are relatively limited.
Having said that, if you don't plan to keep the old system, you might like to offer it to people here. Certainly, the RAM will be useful to someone, and perhaps the HDD as well?
Regarding resolution and graphics cards:
I can well understand why you are confused!
Every computer needs a graphics chip - otherwise it wouldn't be able to produce a picture. Now, there was a time when you required a separate card to do this. But sometime around the mid to late 1990s, manufacturers started to integrate the necessary silicon onto the main motherboard. Doing this reduced the cost, of course.
So yes, you do have a graphics "card", logically speaking. But in physical terms, you don't have an actual card that contains just the graphics chip.
Of course, if you wanted to, you can plug in a graphics card of your choosing. At which point, the computer stops using the existing graphics hardware on the motherboard.
Hopefully that clears that up
Onto resolution:
Consider that the display in front of you is actually a piece of graph paper. The individual squares can be filled with whatever colour you like, within reason. Well, you have 16.7 million colours to choose from - including rather more than 50 shades of grey
In fact, if you can find a magnifying glass, you'll see that this is pretty much the case. (Let's ignore the RGB sub-elements for now.)
So, these little squares are called "pixels", as I'm sure you know.
OK - resolution is simply the amount of pixels. Your graphics card can be configured to produce a number of different sizes - and 1024 by 768 is the size you're currently using. It's a very common choice.
In the CRT days, when you changed resolution, your monitor changed the number of lines displayed automatically to match the resolution that the graphics card was producing. No-doubt that you'll also have the option of 640 by 480, and 800 by 600, and selecting these caused the line and field time-bases to run at different rates.
But, the joy of CRT monitors is that this process worked flawlessly. No distortion or artefacts were produced - apart from perhaps being able to see the line structure on a low resolution mode.
In effect, as you changed resolution, you were changing the size of the squares on your sheet of graph paper. The image always filled the screen, but in high resolution modes, you had more squares on the paper, but they were smaller squares. If you went for a lower resolution mode, you had fewer squares, but they were bigger. As I say, CRTs coped with this admirably...
Now, you have an LCD monitor.
Unlike CRTs, an LCD panel is actually a piece of graph paper. It has its own pixels...
Now we have a problem. What happens if your graphics card is using a different piece of graph paper?
If you have access to two different pieces of graph paper, you can try this for yourself. I have some at home which is 0.1", and I also have some which is 2mm. Put these on top of each other and hold them up to the light. You'll see that you'll never get them to line up.
I'm sure that makes sense. If so, please understand that this is the problem you have now.
So that the picture is usable, your LCD monitor will be trying to scale the signal from your graphics chip so that it fills the screen. But, your display has many more pixels than the graph paper in the graphics chip - there is no easy way to match things up. So, if your computer is trying to illuminate a single pixel at the middle of the screen, your display will actually illuminate several all at once. Moreover, it will actually illuminate some of them at a lower brightness level, which in effect blurs the pixel that is illuminated. As unlikely as it sounds, this is actually preferable to the alternative, but the net effect is that the overall picture is very soft indeed - almost like a de-focussed CRT.
So, when you get your new computer (or graphics card), you need to find out how many pixels your monitor has, and make sure the graphics card is outputting the same. In other words, the graph paper the graphics card is using needs to be the same as the monitor has. In practice, this will almost certainly happen automatically, because the monitor and computer will talk to each other as the computer boots up. It's not happening now because your aged graphics chip is unable to output the correct signal, but this is really unusual.
You might find that text and other items on screen seem a bit too small when this has correctly taken place. If so, come back for advice. Because, rather than asking the graphics card to change its graph paper - an approach which was fine in the CRT days - we need to ask Windows to draw the text at a larger font size. There is a setting for this, and it works very well indeed - you get the best of all worlds - nice sharp, crisp displays, yet really fine detail when needed.
It's a shame you're not local, because I could have popped around and demonstrated all of this in the time it's taken me to write it all. Once seen, it really is obvious and very understandable. You'll see what I mean when you get that new computer
All the best,
Mark
