<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Jun 8, 2006, at 9:19 AM, Will Constable wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <DIV class="Section1"><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy">Yea—I was very aware of the ‘rule breaking’ I was doing… I origionally planned on putting the computer by the TV and running network to it. Lets just say that wouldn’t fly for aesthetic reasons—the computer is a piece of junk with noisy drives and fans, and an ugly case—it belongs out of sight and the room the TV is in has been decorated nicely and everything… So I decided to try the video and audio—I really hope I can make it work—before I terminated the cable as it is now, I put s-vid ends on the two ends of the spool of cat 5 and ran the whole 100 ft from my main myth server to the TV and found the picture to be fine; that’s a Geforce 4 ti4200 while my new box uses an ‘el cheapo’ mx420 that was lying around—it could be anything you mentioned regarding ground loops/vga signal differences, but my first try will be a friend’s geforce fx that’s lying around at work.. if that fixes things, I’ll just be happy at that.<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy"><O:P> </O:P></SPAN></P></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>As I said, different video cards will behave differently simply because of slight differences in the crystal oscillator frequencies, sometimes.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>If you are handy with electronics here's trick that can sometimes work:</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Locate the quartz (actually tourmaline) crystal on the card, there are usually 2 or more of them so you might have to try this with each.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Solder a short (1 inch or so) piece pf #30 or 32 AWG Kynar wire (the kind used for wire-wrapping) to each side if the crystal.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Twist the two wires together for 2 or 3 turns, making sure the exposed metal ends do not touch each other or anything else.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>See if it makes a difference, if not try adding or subtracting a turn or 2, or moving the wire towards or away from the circuit board.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>If you get to where things work the way you want, put a dab of RTV silicone over the whole thing to protect and stabilize it.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>What you are doing is creating a "gimmick" capacitor of a few picofarads, thus shifting or "trimming" the exact frequency of the crystal a little bit. Note that you can only move the frequency down by this method, not up, which requires a different sort of hack.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Obviously I can't be responsible for any damage you might do to your card, your self or your manly self-image by trying such things, but they have worked for some folks.</DIV></BODY></HTML>