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The Ghost in the Machine

A great number of years ago a CRT monitor I was using gave up. It had served its master well for many years. My father (yes I was still a child!), just out of interest, rang the company he bought the original equipment from. To our surprise they sent us a replacement LCD screen. It works just as well as the original CRT and had the same sort of specs so we were more than happy with the result.

The monitor itself has no identifying marks other than a model number: M15EWA. A Google search suggests two brand names but neither may be the original manufacturer.

I discovered that using a very simple procedure I can get a rather unusual effect from the monitor.


The monitor presents to me its evil eye. If you are a little worse for wear and sat in the dark when this happens, then staring into the eye is quite an experience.

The answer of course is that the monitor is possessed by a dæmon intent on bringing destruction to the world. First by making me switch the monitor on and off. Oh, the seconds I have wasted doing this! It could even be a full minute by now.

Other options are that this is either and Easter egg, albeit an unusual one, or a firmware issue. It is far from being a major issue but I did find it interesting.

To trigger this behaviour:
  1. Switch off the monitor.
  2. Allow the computer to put the graphics card to sleep.
  3. Simultaneously switch the monitor back on and wake the computer.
It looks as if waking the computer during the monitor's POST gets it a little confused, and makes it do pretty things. The same thing occurs on any computer I test it on. Or it's a djinn.
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