Many Macintosh PowerBook owners are confused when they see two wide black bands (borders) across the top and bottom of their PowerBook computer's display. In most cases these black bands are a normal function of the display switching resolutions or using video mirroring.

There are two situations in which black bands such as these can normally occur on the screen of PowerBook 5300 series computers:

1. These black bands occur on the Macintosh PowerBook 5300c computer with 512K of Video RAM (VRAM) in 640x400 resolution. The PowerBook 5300c model that comes with 8 MB of RAM on the Logic Board has the same display as the 5300c which has 1 MB VRAM. Because the model with 512K of VRAM has the same display it is capable of displaying thousands of colors, but the image does not fill the whole screen as it does on the model with 1 MB of VRAM. When "Thousands" are checked in the Monitors control panel, the display reduces from 640x480 to 640x400. This same thing happens on the PowerBook 540c, 270c, 2300c and most other PowerBook computers with color screens.
2. These black bands can also occur on a Macintosh PowerBook 5300ce computer and similar models used with a 13" or 14" monitor. If mirroring is turned on, the internal display will have to reduce from 800x600 down to 640x480 and will cause a black band (border) to appear around the outside edge of the screen.

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