CiBOX Monitor -Hidden Factory Menu
A couple of years ago, I got paid for some programming with a CiBOX C1905 19″ Monitor.
When I first got it, I thought it was the dogs-danglies, however after using it for a little while, two inconsolable problems came to light.
Personally I dislike wide-screen monitors. I spend a lot of time typing and whether it be paragraphs of text or lines of code / config files; all of which (especially if you hope it to be printable) have a habit of being in portrait; eg: Scrolling Down!
I have got nothing against the idea of the wide-screen format, but I do object to these ridiculous resolutions I now have to endure. My nice monitor at home is an old 19″ Sony Trinitron; approximately 7 years old now and happily supports a resolution of 1280×1024. The CiBox replaced another old Sony Trinitron; this time a 15″ and came with my first PC in 1996. It supported (before it finally died) a resolution of 1024×768.
OK, I suppose, just having typed it now, that in comparison 1440×900 isn’t as awful a resolution as it could be, but seriously, its nowhere near as high as it could be. I have config files going on for thousands of lines and these screens are not helping.
I was swapping a hard-drive in a £2,000 Sony VAIO laptop last month1 and it booted Vista. I couldn’t work out why it had such massive icons until I realised the screen in this slick shiny box was only 1366×768. What the freakin fuck!?
My other major annoyance is with the colours on this hunk-o-junk. I didn’t realise it until the guy I was coding with wanted me to look at some background boxes I couldn’t see. No matter how I try and adjust it, pale-pastel colours just don’t exist on this thing. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has this problem. Anyway, onto the bit you might be interested in:
[HowTo: Engineers Menu]
- Switch off the monitor.
- Hold down the Volume-Down button.
- Tap the Power button. Keep the volume-down button held down.
- The monitor will power on. It should show you adjusting the volume down, however the OSD will applier on the Left (usually its on the right).
- Select System from the OSD Menu.
- Power cycle the monitor as usual to reset.
I don’t pretend to understand what you can do in the Factory menu. Mess about and break things at your own risk; I reset my total on-time before I realised what I shouldn’t be doing.
- It was still under warranty, but the owner had previous experience with Sony’s wonderful support system and decided it would be easier and cheaper to get it done privatly. ↩