Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 7

Have a 3 week old Visor Deluxe, it was working fine, then the day before Christmas I turned it on to get a phone number and could barely read the screen even under bright light. It had been working fine just an hour before. Evewn though the batteries were at about 40% I put new ones in, but that didn't help.

I tried a soft reset, after waiting two days for an answer from Handspring (no help from them yet) and the original splash screen came up bright, but then faded just before changing to a (very) faded menu. All programs the same...almost unreadable.

Did a soft reset again, same thing....any opinions? Is this a hardware problem?
Thanks in advance!

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

Have you checked the contrast setting? Tap on the little half-white, half-black circle in the lower-left corner of the Graffiti area (where the Menu icon is) to adjust it.

__________________

God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 7

yes

Well, that is the first thing I did, I guess I needed to mention that.
These are the added programs on it right now...
BugMe!
HandiShopper
Gammon
Hand Mirror
Hackmaster (not used yet)
SilverScreen
MahJong
Mapopolis
PopMe
Spellman
Yaps

there may be more, but those were all I could read...

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

SilverScreen might be the culprit. There's been other discussions about having contrast problems while using it. Try disabling it and see if that helps.

__________________

God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 7

Thanks for your replies, Mark!

Well, Silver Screen and all the other programs had been on it for about 10 days, before the fade, with no difference in the way it was working....except that Mapopolis slowed it down some.....
Silver Screen is not working now because it disabled itself after the trial period ended.

Nothing else was new or different. I went to the store, used HandiShopper with no problem, came home and turned it on to get a phone number, and ......almost no screen!
The FIRST thing I did was check the contrast and fiddle with it, then checked to see if it was identical in all programs, then started looking for help on the net....

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

Since OS 3.1 doesn't directly support the 4-bit greyscale, programs like SilverScreen (I'm not sure about Mapopolis) bypass the OS and write directly to the hardware. This seems to cause some of the display problems people have. Maybe someone who has used SilverScreen can help shed some light on this for you. While it is possible that the hardware itself is bad, I think eliminating all software possibilities makes more sense as a first step.

__________________

God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 7

how to do it

ok, Mark...how do I uninstall Silver Screen? One of the reasons I put it on there was so I could use it's uninstall feature, as I couldn''t see any other way to uninstall programs I wanted to try out....

Registered: Jun 2000
Location: Pembroke,MA
Posts: 307

Re: how to do it

quote:

---

Originally posted by maddy
how do I uninstall Silver Screen?

---

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 7

hahhah

I'm used to there being a DIFFERENCE between delete and uninstall....I kept searching and searching for uninstall in the help section and couldn't find it anywhere....it just never occurred to me to use delete...guess I had a "senior moment"

I deleted SliverScreen, Hackmaster, Mapopolis, and PopMe...no change. Soft reboot...no change - the splash screen comes up nice and bright, then it suddenly fades to almost unreadable. EEEK!

I wouldn't mind trying a hard reset, as all data is backed up on the desktop...think that is the next step? Any idea as to why programs that have been working fine together for days would suddenly do this, if it is a software problem??

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 7

ok I

Well, I did a hard reboot, and that took care of the problem, although I still don't know what the problem was caused by, since it happened many days after the software was in and working fine....

Thanks for your help, MarcEagle and LarryN