<p dir="ltr">I *think* the possible damage to monitors was related to the vertical and horizontal refresh rate signal from the vga , and the capabilities of the monitor - which was dependent on the embedded chips in the monitor. Since the monitor is largely driven by the timings from the video card, incorrect timings could burn out the monitor by essentially overdriving the chip that is converting the analog signal into scanlines for the display.</p>
<p dir="ltr">My guess is the dell is burning out the monitors, considering that you used several LCD vendors, either the video card has problems, or has to use a faulty driver that cannot sense edid properly. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Most <a href="http://x.org">x.org</a> stuff senses that automatically on initialization, but old graphics cards aren't maintained, and don't have the more modern DDC used. (Just saw a proposal in Fedora 20 to possibly drop all the older drivers, which would leave ATI/AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA as your primary options)</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Oct 30, 2013 1:36 PM, "Aaron Ruscetta" <<a href="mailto:arxaaron@gmail.com">arxaaron@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><div>RESOLUTION:</div><div>(pun in tended)</div><div><br></div>Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I had tested these monitors<div>with known good sources, both VGA and (where supported on the</div><div>Veiwsonic) DVI to confirm they were dead before asking here.</div>
<div>Sorry I didn't make that clear.</div><div><br></div><div>The replies confirmed my understanding that the circuitry on any</div><div>newer LCD monitor would simply reject any out of spec signals,</div><div>but the supporting opinions were extremely helpful. I'll just throw</div>
<div>another spare monitor at my housemate's system and hope it</div><div>lasts for a while. Embarrassingly, I still have 3 more 17" and</div><div>2 ea. 15" units that he can choose from, in addition to an old</div>
<div>school Mac G3 era monitor.</div><div><br></div><div>in peace,</div><div>aaron </div><div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br>[-: scissors of courteous file size awareness :-]<br><br></div></div>
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