I already posted this under flatscreens, but I've since realized it's a software issue, so I'm reposting here.

Hi!
I just finished doing the overhead projector/LCD panel thing and IT WORKED! This is especially amazing, seeing as I had to chisel some of the silicon wafer away to free six immovable screws. Violence and technology or not, everything's working great and looks just like the pics in the tutorial. There's a problem that wasn't addressed in the tutorial, though: The projector stage is 10.5" by 10.5", and while the whole unit perfectly seats a 15" LCD, obviously a maximum of 10.5" is viewable on the wall. While I was shopping for an overhead, I kept running into that problem, but the absolute biggest stage size is 14" by something, so no matter what this issue is going to keep coming up. I figured I'd just reduce the "size of the screen" via the display control panel...

...I've since learned there's apparently no way whatsoever to do that intentionally. I say "intentionally" because I've crashed out of games and seen the "shrunken screen" effect I'm going for in the past. How do I achieve this manually? The monitor is a CTX S501a and the OSD menu only offers horizontal and vertical POSITION, no scaling. The simplicity of the problem is driving me NUTS. I need like "SCREENSHRINKER.EXE" or something to that effect. Help!

Thanks a lot and sorry for the length of this!

Start - Control Panel - Display - Settings Tab.

Try 800x600 on the slider bar.

I doubt this will work for him - the LCD panel will recalibrate and resize the image so that it fills his screen. What he needs is an 800x600 image at the original pixel size* so he has a black border around the display.

* for want of a better way to say that...

I don't know how to do that.

Mike.

<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>

You *might* be able to trick it into doing that if you tell the display properties the type of monitor is something else - maybe a 17" crt, then set the resolution. That's a very WAG though.

See, the electronics inside the LCD read the incoming signal and auto-adjust to get the display to fill the available space. So, to work around that (since mfg's, not surprisingly, don't give you the ability to do it directly) you need something that will fool it into not adjusting.

Mike.

<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>

That only reduces the resolution. Icons etc. appear bigger.

Hey, that sounds pretty good. How do I get more options on the list? So far, all that shows up is stuff I've actually got.

Yeah, that's about the size of it. No pun intended.

Control Panel -> Add hardware. Eventually you'll get to a spot that lets you manually choose from a list of items. Choose some CRT monitor - Nec multisync, Viewsonic, IBM, whoever...

Mike.

<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>