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Student Version L E S S O N P L A N #39 Per.
CLASS: Computer Repair, Maintenance, Upgrade and Management
Name:
DATE: Thursday January 7th, 2009
TOPIC: Video.
AIM: What are some video issues we have to deal with as PC technicians?
NOTE:
1) At the end of the period, leave your computer on the desktop screen, put the keyboard on top of the monitor and push in your
chair.
2) Here is an outline of the content below
CRT
= Assignment #2, Assignment #13, Assignment #14
Dot Pitch
= Assignment #8
Dual Monitor Setup
= Assignment #18, Assignment #19
DXDIAG
= Assignment #16
Energy Star or Green Monitor
= Assignment #12
Interlaced
= Assignment #7
LCD Monitor
= Assignment #13, Assignment #14
Multiscan monitors
= Assignment #11
Power Settings
= Assignment #15
Raster Scan
= Assignment #3
Refresh Rate
= Assignment #6
Resolution
= Assignment #9, Assignment #10
Video Card
= Assignment #1, Assignment #5, Assignment #10, Assignment #17
Vertical Scan Frequency
= Assignment #4
H.W. # 39
1) What are some video issues we may deal with as PC technicians?
DO NOW:
What handles all the communication between the CPU and the monitor? Video Card
What enables the operating system to handle communication between the CPU and the display adapter? Drivers
PROCEDURE:
Write the AIM and DO NOW.
Get students working!
Take attendance.
Go Over HW
Collect HW
Go over the Do Now
Assignment #1:
Look up and write down the features of the
www.tigerdirect.com.
EVGA GeForce 7600 GT / 256MB GDDR3 / SLI / PCI Express / Dual DVI / HDTV / Video Card
video card at
Assignment #2:
First let’s take a look at the old standby display type, namely CRTs.
What does CRT stand for? Look this up at www.techweb.com/encyclopedia. __________________________________________
CRTs work by shooting electrons towards the display end of a CRT. When struck by a stream of electrons, the phosphor
on the screen releases a burst of energy. The monitor displays video data as the electron gun makes a series of horizontal sweeps
across the screen, starting at the upper-left and ending at the lower right. Each horizontal sweep is called a raster line. A
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resolution of 400 lines refreshed 60 times per second requires a scan rate of 24 kHz (60 x 400) plus time to bring the beam back
to the beginning of the next line. This is called the Refresh Rate.
Assignment #3:
Look up the term Raster Scan at www.techweb.com/encyclopedia. What is this?
Assignment #4:
Look up vertical scan frequency at www.techweb.com/encylcopedia. What is Refresh Rate?
What is a recommended Refresh Rate to prevent eye strain?
Assignment #5:
Go to Start, Control Panel, Display, Settings, Advanced, Adapter. Write
down all the information on your adapter.
Assignment #6:
Check your computers Refresh Rate. Go to the Desktop, right-click,
the select Properties, Settings, Advanced, Monitor. What is your
computer’s current refresh rate?
Assignment #7:
Go to www.necdisplay.com/support/css/Techlibrary/interlaced_vs_non.htm. Write down the difference between interlaced and
non-interlaced.
Which is better?
Why?
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Assignment #8:
Look up dot-pitch at www.techweb.com/encyclopedia. What is dot-pitch?
Go to http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ba/bg/mntr/ss04_dotpitch.gif. Which dot pitch values yield sharper images?
Assignment #9:
Look up resolution at www.techweb.com/encyclopedia. What is resolution?
The more resolution and the more colors you use, the more memory that is required by the display adapter to lay out the image.
How much video memory is required to have a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, using ~ 16 million colors (2 24 or 24 bit)?
Assignment #10:
Examine your adapter card video memory. Determine what is the highest resolution you can have using 16 million colors?
Assignment 10.5: What are VRAM and WRAM?
Assignment #11:
At www.techweb.com/encyclopedia, look up and describe a multi frequency or multi scan monitor.
Assignment #12:
Look up Energy Star at www.techweb.com/encyclopedia. What would be classified as an Energy Star or Green Monitor?
Assignment #13:
Go to www.howstuffworks.com and look up “How Monitors Work”, for a comparison of LCD monitors and CRT monitors.
Assignment #14:
Go to www.tigerdirect.com and compare the ViewSonic E70FB / 17-Inch / 1280 x 1024 / Black / CRT Monitor
with Hyvision MV177 / 17" / 8ms / SXGA / 1280x1024 / Black / LCD Monitor.. Which one would you get?
Why?
Question:
What is the difference in signals used by LCD monitors and CRT Monitors?
Question:
What is a RAMDAC?
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If you have a SVGA video card with a RAMDAC, how is the analog signal converted to digital for an LCD monitor?
Look up DVI at www.techweb.com/encyclopedia for a picture of the DVI interface used by the digital LCD world.
Assignment #15:
Go to the Display properties in Control Panel, Screen Saver tab. In Power settings, make it so that the monitor turns off after 3
hours of non-use.
Assignment #16:
Look up DirectX at www.pcwebopedia.com. What is DirectX?
Go to Start, Run, and type DXDIAG. What information does this program give you?
What DirectX version are you running?
Assignment #17: Go to www.howstuffworks.com and look up How Graphics Cards work.
Assignment #18:
Go to http://freepctech.com/pc/001/guide_dual_monitors.shtml and see how to set up multiple monitors.
Assignment #19:
Go to http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/intel810/sb/cs-009127.htm. How do you determine which video card to boot from
first in a multi-card, multi-monitor setup?
Sample Test Questions:
1) Some Tech by the water cooler kept speaking about raster lines and painting the screen. What could she have been referring
to?
A) Horizontal Refresh Rates
B) Video Drivers
C) Phosphors
D) An art project involving an old door
2) A set of three phosphors – red, green, and blue – on the monitor is called a _________
A) The shadow mask
B) Resolution
C) A triad
D) A phosphor dot
3) The definition of dot-pitch is ______
A) The diagonal distance between the holes of the shadow mask
B) The physical size of the pixels
C) The size of a triad
D) The diagonal distance between phosphorous dots of the same color
4) Which of the following types of video cards are capable of supporting 640 * 480 resolution at 16 colors? (choose all that
apply)
A) CGA
B) EGA
C) VGA
D) SVGA
5) Raphael wants to run his new 19-inch monitor at 1280x1024 with true color (24 bit, 16.7 million colors). He has an older
1MB ATI video card. What do you say to him?
A) Sorry, 19-inch monitors can’t display that high of a resolution
B) Give it up, Raphael! You need a video card with a lot more RAM
C) Cool! Invite me to your cubicle for Quake III
D) It’s not going to work – no monitor can do that resolution
6) Monitor resolution is shown as the number of ___________
A) Horizontal triads times the number of vertical triads
B) Horizontal pixels times the number of vertical pixels.
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C) Horizontal phosphor dots times the number of vertical phosphor dots
D) Horizontal refresh lines times the number of vertical refresh lines.
7) Which are some of the you can make to a modern monitor?
A) Pincushioning
B) Brightness
C) Contrast
D) all of the above
8) What is the standard VGA resolution?
A) 640x350
B) 640x480 C) 800x600
D) 1024x768
9) What is the standard SVGA resolution?
A) 640x350
B) 640x480 C) 800x600
D) 1024x768
10) A monitor that scans every other line is known as a/an __________ monitor
A) Interlaced B) non-interlaced
C) VGA
D) HDTV
11) The smallest element on a monitor is known as a ________
A) Character
B) Dot-pitch C) Diode
D) Pixel
12) A user wants to run the monitor at the 800x600 resolution with 16 million colors. What is the minimum amount of video
RAM the user needs?
A) 2MB
B) 4MB C) 8MB D) 16MB
13) Which of the following is the best dot pitch for a 17” monitor?
A) .39
B) .51
C) .28
D) .26
14) WRAM is used on a
A) Modem
B) Video Card
C) Motherboard
D) ATA controller
15) How much video RAM is needed to display 1024 by 768 at 24-bit color?
A) 1MB
B) 4MB
C) 8MB
D) 512KB
16) A customer calls and says that her computer will not boot. She can hear noises and see lights on the computer itself, but
nothing comes up on the screen. Which of the following should you take the site to possibly fix the problem?
A) Hard Drive
B) Video Card
C) Power Cable
D) Power Supply
17) The monitor is displaying in mostly green and not in normal colors. Which of the following could cause this?
A) The refresh rate is too fast
B) The resolution is set too high
C) A pin on the connector is bent
D) The drivers are installed incorrectly
18) A customer calls for support with a monitor problem, but can’t wait for a service technician. She describes the problem being
no monitor signal, no screen saver, no hibernation, and she reports that she thinks it is the video card. The customer also
mentions that she has 3 identical functioning systems in her office. Which of the items below could be switched with the
same item in one of the functioning systems to try to eliminate the video card as the source of the problem?
A) The monitor
B) The motherboard
C) The video chip driver
D) All flat ribbon cables.
19) What does a 28 dot pitch refer to in describing a monitor?
A) .28cm wide
B) .28 mm wide
C) .28cm apart
D) .28 mm apart
20) A video resolution of 800 x 600 would constitute which video mode?
A) EGA
B) VGA
C) CGA
D) SVGA
21) Which device would you plug into an AGP slot?
A) Hard Drive
B) Serial Port
C) Video Card
D) External Storage Device
22) What best describes the time it takes CRTs electron beams to paint the screen from top to bottom in a monitor?
A) Dot Pitch
B) Interlacing
C) Video RAM
D) Refresh Rate
23) How many pins are on a VGA connector?
A) 9
B) 15
C) 25
D) 50
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24) A user complains that after a colleague used her computer, a larger than normal black border appeared around the edge of the
Windows desktop. As a technician, what is the first logical question you would ask?
A) Have you adjusted the contrast?
B) Has the operating system just been upgraded?
C) Have you checked to see if the video cable is lose
D) Have you checked the monitor control settings
25) A customer’s Windows desktop appears distorted on her monitor. You want to ISOLATE the problem. What could you do?
A) Try another monitor
B) Try another program
C) Replace the power supply
D) Install additional video memory
26) What is the function of an energy star compliant monitor?
A) Used only with fast processors
B) Same as standard monitor type
C) Switches to low power status when signal does not change
D) Consumes less power than other monitors when powering up.