You can use a television as your monitor on a Power Macintosh 8500 series computer. However, you may run into some difficulty if you set the screen resolution to 256x192. When you try to reopen the Sound & Displays control panel, you get a message which says that the screen is too small to display this window and it closes.

When the Power Macintosh 8500 is using a television as its only display, the Sound & Displays control panel offers screen resolution options of 640x480, 512x384, 320x240, and 256x192. At the 256x192 resolution, you are not able to reopen the Sound & Displays control panel to return to a larger screen size. Resetting the PRAM will not return the resolution to a standard setting either.

The way to set your monitor back to a larger screen size is to use the Control Strip software that comes with the Power Macintosh 8500. Use the Resolution Control Strip module (the second module from the left) to switch to a larger screen resolution.

If you have removed the Control Strip software, you will need to reinstall it. You may need to connect a standard Macintosh monitor to reinstall the software because some of the buttons on the installer dialog boxes may not appear on the smaller screen. While you have the standard display connected, you can access the Sound & Displays control panel and set the resolution higher. It is a good idea to reinstall the Control Strip software even if you don't use it and use the Extensions Manager to disable it instead of removing it permanently.

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