Problem solved! Thanks for all the suggestions everyone; I either tried them all or was just about to when the mystery was solved. Turns out the video card needed a different driver.
The way I found out was, I e-mailed the seller of the G5 and told him about the problems and that I wanted to return it to him for a refund. He said fine, but he asked me to try something first. He said he just remembered that he'd once had to install a special driver for the ATI video card in order to get it to work with an extra-long monitor cable (with a "repeater" or some such thing). He said it might need a different driver to work with normal-length monitor cables. So he e- mailed me two ATI drivers to try. Both were old (2005), but then, so is the G5. One of the drivers refused to install, but the other one did. And after a restart, the trouble is gone! The Displays Control Panel now offers 19 different resolutions for the 23-inch Cinema Display, and so far, a lot of fooling around and experimenting with the mouse in numerous apps and webpages through Safari have not resulted in any more Giant Pixels. Things seem completely normal now. At least from all you guys I learned what CAN go wrong to cause such problems, and Bruce hit it when he mentioned checking for drivers, so it was an educational experience as well as a frustrating one. All's well that ends well! Thanks again all! Tom -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
