I threw together an old Intel 430FX mobo, p166, 48 mb EDO SIMMs, 2.1 gb HD, 1 mb Trident PCI video, sound & modem (both ISA). For what it is, it runs good & works well with my 15" CTX monitor.

I just sold it (without the monitor) to a friend. He said he had an old 14" monitor that would work with it...a Packard Bell 1412SL (dated 1995). But he can only get it to run at 640x480x16 color...256 or 16-bit make the display flip out. All 3 settings worked fine with my CTX monitor though, so that pretty much rules out a prob with the video card. So I searched & found the PB monitor drivers online, downloaded & installed them...but it still would not run any higher than 16 color. I'm fairly certain that the drivers installed properly & I manually selected the monitor from the hardware listing. Anyhow, he left, came back 20 min later with a brand new 17" monitor, we plugged it in, set it up & it worked perfectly at 1024x768x16-bit!

Wow...that was a lot of setup to get to this question...

What is the deal with these Packard Bell monitors?

i have a 17 inch packard bell monitor it just uses windows plug and play driver but works upto 1280 1024

maybe because it is a older monitor but it should still go up to 1024 at least

i have a old 14 inch that does this but this monitor maybe very limited try looking for specs aswell as the drivers

it might be because your video card is to modern for it

as newer video cards require a monitor that complys with some new standard cant remmember what it is called but if your monitor has a blue connector it is ok

so maybe a older video card would work with this monitor

rob: I was wondering about that myself. I have a couple of 1 mb ISA video cards that I wanted to try, but he decided to buy a new monitor instead. I actually have another 14" PB monitor & I tried that one too, but had the same problem. I don't recall the manufacture date on that one, but wouldn't ya think that 1995 would be new enough to handle "modern" video? Apparently not...

Blue connectors?? Are orange ones bad...

I got a 14" PB monitor connected to a 32mb gf2. It goes up to 800*600*32 but if i put it on 1024*768 it flips out with red lines all across the screen. It's also from 1995. I hope this info is helpful.

CJackway: did you have to install monitor drivers to get your monitor to run at that setting? or did Windows recognize it?

Mostly it has to do with the refresh rate,
But yes a lot of old monitors wont go 800x600 or better, usually manually lowering the refresh helps but a lot of the older adapter cards/drivers do not allow adjustment of this...Mostly it is the monitor
being vintage...I run into this once in a while also.

Windows recognises my PB monitor as a default monitor (windows 98se) so i didnt have to install monitor drivers. However i cannot change the refresh rate as the drop down menu isnt even there!