%$@#$@!

[torquill]

My laptop screen just died. I have to be at work in less than an hour and my screen is dead, dead, dead.

I tried restarting the machine and got blurs, flickers, and what might have been text. I identified the grub screen, barely... when it got to opening X, it started to try to draw the whole graphical background and did a beautiful "sunrise" effect where white came down from the top and washed away all other color in the screen. It's blank white now, the panel isn't able to do anything else.

F@#%!@.

It's a laptop, too. Dammit.

Maybe next week I can try cracking it to see what's wrong with the cables. Next week. Argh.

Comments

[johno.livejournal.com]

Have you tried hooking up a external monitor yet to make sure it's the screen and/or video card or just a setting.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

I've got it hooked up to a (huge) Trinitron right now. Good thing my brother had one handy.

It's the cable, it turns out -- I'd been having mild flakiness issues for a while, though the sudden severity threw me. I'd guess it's an Achilles heel of the model, as the cable failed exactly where it flexes when I open and close the top. If you tweak it exactly right, it sometimes works...

Unfortunately, HP sells the cable only as part of the entire screen/top unit, which puts it at roughly $500. It was suggested that I try calling the repair guys at HP to see where I might be able to get another cable... but it looks like it might be a matter of jerry-rigging a new one. The connectors may be standard, but even if they're not we can splice in new wires.

Ahhh, it's almost like the old days... we have a TRS-80 rusting in the corner whose innards look nothing like what Tandy designed. Surface-mounting changed some things, but we can still break out the old soldering iron once in a while. :)