(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hi all,

Recently, I set up Wary Puppy on an old Pentium 3 for a nephew who acquired the computer as a sort of hand-me-down through the family. The system needed a monitor. Since money was a concern for my nephew, I managed to find an old Samsung 19 inch LCD monitor at a recycle depot. While the display seemed to have some life left to it, I noticed some "stuck pixels" and blotchy areas on the screen.

I found a free cross-platform utility at: http://sourceforge.net called Stuck Pixel Sweeper, ran it intermittently over the course of five days, and the result was a huge improvement: all blotchy areas filled in and/or disappeared, and only one tiny area with about three or four "stuck" pixels remained.

This small program is a java archive (jar) file so you will need to have the java runtime environment installed on your system. Basically the program fills the screen with a rapid and random display of the color spectrum in attempt to excite the pixels and "unstick" them. Your mileage may vary... there is no guarantee. While it appeared to work for me, it could also be that just using the old monitor freshened it up lots, but in any event the program comes at the right price, so it is worth a try if you have an old monitor in a similar condition.

Cheers

Dear Monsie,

Nice find. I have an LG Flatron with a few seemingly dead pixels and am trying to fix the problem with this prog. As it is tiny (3k), it would be nice to redo it in c, so as to eliminate the java dependency. I might give that a go. Thanks.

With kind regards,
vovchik

Hi vovchik,

I hope your monitor has some stuck pixels or hot pixels, and not "dead pixels" as you mention in your reply. From what I have read, there is no fix for dead pixels. Apparently, dead pixels will appear as black dots ... the pixels don't light up with any color. You can try testing your monitor at: http://www.doihaveadeadpixel.com to confirm if the pixels show up with color or not.

Cheers,
Monsie

Thanks,
i will have to try this on my mothers laptop - there is a blob of pixels up on the top left of the screen - they are very white on a white background like the brightness is turned up full on those pixels but on different colours red back green etc or when playing vdeo they seem to work ok - are these stuck pixels, any idea what might be wrong with them ?

Hi stu90,

This was actually my first experience with trying to revive an old LCD monitor, so I am no expert... however, based on my research and understanding of defective pixels in LCD's, it seems to me that your mother's laptop has some hot pixels. These are pixels in which the three sub-pixels (red, green, blue) are always on therefore producing white light. Can it be fixed? - -possibly, but not necessarily. My sense is that pixel fixing software works sometimes and to some extent, so that you may notice an improvement, but then again you may not see any difference. Sometimes improvements are short lived. However, I think these utilities are worth a try because I don't think they can cause any harm or make the monitor in worse shape.

Basically, all defective pixels are "stuck pixels". They are either stuck "on" or "off". In the case of dead pixels, they are stuck off because no power is getting to them, so they appear black, and it might indicate a broken transistor. Herein lies the crux of the matter in that much of the problem reflects a hardware issue. The thing is though, that pixels respond to minute changes in current, to turn on and off, and to produce different color intensities with the net result that we are able to perceive thousands or even millions of colors. A pixel fixing utility will mimic or yield those minute changes in current that a sub-pixel produces as the screen flashes rapidly with a random assortment of colors within the RGB spectrum. The net result is that the software might be able to tweak what is basically a hardware based problem... and so sometimes it works.

In my case I think I was somewhat lucky. I think the monitor display had deteriorated after a long period of being dormant. The monitor showed definite signs of improvement after a few days of regular use, and the pixel sweeping utility helped restore the display faster than if I had done nothing else at the time.

I want to share this not because my results are proven; --rather this approach warrants more testing so that other users might benefit as well as to provide valuable feedback.

Lastly, this utility was hard to find. A search at SourceForge yielded no results for me... possibly because the software is old and hasn't been developed for a while. It is at SourceForge, but likely only retrievable through a search engine reference. Also, this was the only free utility that I found that would work on a Linux based system, so I felt the need to bring it to the attention of the forum.

Cheers,
Monsie

Thank you for the detailed information Monsie