[plug] Query about display problem

[Bret Busby]

Hello.

I am running Debian 5, on, I think, an AMD Athlon, and the monitor is
a Viewsonic VZ703b 17" 4:3 aspect ratio screen.

(I do not remember how to get the displaying of the hardware
components (CPU, graphics adaptor/accelerator, display, etc)

In the last few days, the monitor has started to "flash" off - going
black, with nothing displayed, for a couple of seconds at a time.

This can happen repeatedly, with progressively increasing frequency
during a session as described below.

It seems to happen mostly when I am running alpine, within a terminal window.

Apart from it having happened once  just before staring to compose
this message, shortly after I opened konqueror, to log into my gmail
(which may be the only time that it has happened other than when I
have been so using alpine), within a minute or so of my closing down
alpine and the terminal window, I do not remember it happening with
applications other than when I have been running alpine within a
terminal window.

Is this an indication that the monitor is likely stuffed, or the
graphics adaptor is stuffed, or that the fault lies in the
alpine/xterm/gnome combination?

A new printer has been installed; a Samsung CLX3185Fw, using the
Samsung Unified Driver (which required a replacement of the Samsung
Unified Driver, to provide for the printer, which was not available
with the previous version of the Unified Driver), which may be about
the timing of the start of the problem, but I am not sure of the exact
timing of the start of the problem and the installation of the printer
- both have been in the last few days.

So, I do not know whether the problem could lie with the printer or
the printer driver.

Thanks in anticipation.

-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
 Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
 A Trilogy In Four Parts",
 written by Douglas Adams,
 published by Pan Books, 1992

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