Degauss option on the pc monitor

[freak_unique]

Hey does anyone know what the Degauss button does on the monitor - i know it flickers the screen a bit then stops, and the more u do it the less long it flickers for...but what does it do like sort the colours out or something? cheers

[kempie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degauss

[Buenchico]

How old is your monitor? I haven't seen a 'Degauss' button for years!

Over time, an electromagnetic field can build up inside a cathode ray tube which results in the electron beams being 'bent' off course. The result is a fuzzy display. The best places to see examples of this are in those corner shops and takeaway outlets that still have very old security monitors. The picture is often extremely fuzzy; this is usually because the CRT needs degaussing.

Pressing the degaussing button on your monitor creates an oscillating electromagnetic field which 'wipes' the unwanted field and removes the 'bending' effect on the beams. The reason you don't see many monitors with a degaussing button is that most modern CRT monitors are designed to 'degauss' every time they're turned on.

Chris

[freak_unique]

hehe cheers for that well my monitors quite old picked up this huge one from out of the paper for �12 its absolutely huge screened! And the one i had before it had degauss on it but was ancient! Didnt realise that thats why the old securty tvs were all fuzzy!

[heathfield]

Put a magnet up against the screen of your monitor when it's working, move it around, and see what happens. (It's OK to do, and won't do any harm). You'll see the effect of a magnetic field on the electron beam that's making up the picture. It's sometimes seen on a tube that's been on for a long time, when a corner of the screen takes on a distinct colour cast. Degaussing removes this effect.
An old trick played on TV apprentices was to fix a powerful magnet under the bench where they were trying to set up the picture on a TV set. Whenever the set was moved, the picture would distort. What fun to those in the know!

[kempie]

If you do follow the advice(!) given by heathfield and inadvertently use a sufficiently strong magnet to cause the level of disruption to your monitor screen that cannot be rectified by the monitor's inbuilt degauss function, this page could prove very helpful...

http://woil.ws/fixmonitor/

[heathfield]

Yeah, Kempie, (Good site/tip). Sorry Freak, I had in mind one of those little key-ring type magnets that simply mess up magnetic strips on credit cards, but won't do your screen in!