On 10/3/05, D. Hugh Redelmeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > | From: Jonathan Berry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > | I attempted to turn on my laptop one morning to be met with a > | scrambled screen: > | http://plasmoidia.homelinux.com/users/jonathan/hp_pictures/display/ > > Yikes!
No kidding. :) > I wonder what could be wrong. It looks as if 1/2 of the vertical > stripes are correct and the other half are wrong in some way. Perhaps > you can figure out what is going on from the pattern. I cannot make > out the pattern from your picture. Not easily. It does look like there are stripes that are affected and some that aren't. Like an address line problem somewhere. > Whatever is wrong, it isn't too drastically wrong. Apparently a lot > of the video chain is working. Yeah, and so is most of the computer. Which is probably just even more frustrating. > I don't think your RAM is bad for a couple of reasons. Even so, if > you have two sticks, try each alone. > > Maybe your RAM is bad. How many sticks do you have? If two, try each > alone. Just one. I was going to buy a 1 GB stick, but now I don't know if it will do me any good. So, how could bad RAM do this? I know there is an AGP aperture (I think that is the term) in RAM, but I'm not really familiar with how that works. Is there a screen buffer that resides in (system) RAM? I'm more concerned about the graphics RAM, which is not replicable. > If chips were in sockets, I'd say that you should try reseating them. > But I don't think much is in sockets these days. Nope. See the "internals" dir for pictures. All soldered on. > When an Atari ST computer started to get flaky, I sometimes found that > the "Atari Twist" helped. This is hard to explain without a picture. > Here's the best I've found from a quick google: > http://www.ephotozine.com/forum/viewanswers.cfm?qid=23709 > > Have you ever heard of "the Atari twist" Ellis? This was a way of > reseating chips. Grip the board in both hands (as if you were > carrying a tray), and gently try to twist it. Any socketed chips > tend to move in their sockets removing the oxidation. Supposedly, > Atari STs were notorious for this problem. I've never had to do > this to an Atari, but I have done it to one Amiga 500 though. > > I'd add: > > - Probably best done to the keyboard portion, with the laptop open (I > don't mean disassembled, open as if for use.) > > - Don't use enough force to break, but use enough to cause > mechanical flexing (the whole point). > > - Twist both ways. > > - Perhaps a couple of times. > > You could even try twisting while it is on to see if it makes a > difference. My intuition is that this experiment is only useful if > you've gooten past the won't-boot stage to the curdled-screen stage. Interesting idea. Had not heard that one. So, twist the entire computer then? With everything intact? This thing's pretty solid, I don't know how much things could bend. > | I was able to boot up into Linux and then Windows and grab most of the > | files that I wanted from it. The laptop is now about a month out of > | warranty, and even if it wasn't, I don't know what would be available > | given that they do not make this computer anymore. > > I think that they stock spare parts for a number of years. But they > apparently charge a lot for repairs. Does not hurt to try phoning > support to see where you get -- they might be able to diagnose the > problem. Worth a shot, I guess. I don't think I want to spend more than a couple hundred at the most. For about that or a little more, I could update my desktop. > | The problem seems > | to be a hardware problem with the video card, since the scrambling > | occurs in the BIOS too. > > That suggests the problem is not RAM: I think that the BIOS uses the > frame buffer in a quite different way. On the other hand, in your > third picture, the plain text messages "Press <Esc>..." look intact. Uhh, they are more than other parts of the screen, but I think there is some distortion, though. Hard to tell. > I'd be tempted to see what happened if you boot into some pure-text > console mode (not the "frame-buffer console"). Got a DOS boot dis? > Or Tom's Root Boot floppy? Is there still a way to boot WinXP into > something console-base (like DOS)? No floppy. Frame buffered console shows the same problems. GRUB shows large bands where things are messed up. > Your fourth picture suggests that the scrambling is on video-out too. > So it isn't an LCD panel problem. Yep. > | It's back together now, and I don't think the disassembly did any > | harm. Though, the laptop will not boot now (it did at least once > | after "surgery"). It seems to get stuck trying to initialize the > | video or something (backlight comes on, nothing else), something that > | I saw sporadically before I took it apart, but is rather persist ant > | now. > > This sounds like a more ominous symptom. If you power cycle often > enough, does it eventually show more life? I actually got it to boot a couple of times now. Booted into Linux runlevel 5. Lost it when X tried to start. > Can you hear anything going on as it starts to boot? Floppy, CD, or HD > noise? Of course some of those noises may not be from CPU-initiated > actions. Once it froze, it would not do anything. > | Anyone have any ideas about what might could be done to resurrect the > | machine? > > I haven't looked for this, but ebay seems to have partial laptops and > laptop parts. Maybe. Again, I do not care to spend a whole lot of money. > I'm not confident enough to fiddle inside a notebook except when > desperate, so I don't really know your chances of success. Well, I've taken it all the way apart and put it back again, so I think I could do it again. If I did, I would probably leave the heatsink in place. Putting that back on properly was the one thing that scared me. I did get confused about some screws. Obviously the repair document is not completely accurate. > Good luck! Thanks Hugh. > Keep us up to date on your progress. Okay, what the.... It just came back perfect! Booted to runlevel 3, did some backup, edited xorg.conf to use "nv" driver (since nvidia seemed hopeless) and did an init 5. The screen froze in a scrambled state, but the mouse pointer was fine and could move around. Reboot and... everything seems fine. Do I dare try nvidia again? Or boot Windows? Or reboot at all? It did come back once before after messing up, but after about 10 minutes of using Windows, it reported that the nVidia driver caused a problem and the screen scrambled up. How can this problem be so persist ant and then transient like this? I don't guess I have anything to lose. If it isn't going to be consist ant, it might as well be broken. I suppose I could try out memtest for a while in case it is the RAM. Any other thoughts or ideas? I guess let's hold off on that parts auction for now... Jonathan _______________________________________________ LinuxR3000 mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pcxperience.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxr3000 Wiki at http://prinsig.se/weekee/
