How can I increase brightness/contrast beyond hardware limits?

[Solnyshko]

...in other words: is there software out there that will enable me to push brightness & contrast when the monitor's firmware controller slidebar is maxed out?

I'm stuck with a poorly behaved CRT that refuses step into line - It's pretty old so I imagine the picture tube is going, hence the over all dimness.

text is readable however even with all settings maxed out it's still difficult to pick out detail in photos etc. I am unaware of any settings in windows that will effect picture output. Maybe the signal could be manipulated through a VGA panel? Its hooked up to a Ati 9800pro. Or is there 3rd party stuff out there I should be looking at?

Any help much appreciated!

Sols

 

[fish99]

Graphics card gamma will do the trick. Right click your desktop and select properties. Go into the 'settings' tab, then click the 'advanced' button, and assuming you have your video card drivers installed, there should be a 'colour' tab, where you can change the video card gamma to compensate for the faulty monitor. There should be seperate settings for the desktop and 3d games.

I had to do this with a dim green picture on a CRT once.

 

[whitecrook]

there's a simple solder trick for Dell P1110 and sony g500 series monitors to fix brightness issues. Is your monitor one of them? http://www.hutzelman.com/home/hardware/mods/monitor/

 

[Swanster]

On some (all?) monitors there is a second brightness control inside the monitor that you can alter. On one of my monitors, this adjustment was on the side of the hv transformer, next to the focus control. If you do decide to go inside it, be very aware of the rather high voltages present (>25kv ), which can be present for quite some time after it's switched off.
It might be worth a try, although if the monitor's had a lot of use, i doubt it'll do that much good.