Video issue with T60 - is it the LCD?

[Lefters]

I got a T60 2007GBU for next to nothing as it was out of warranty and had a bad display bug. The display will turn gradually white with colored vertical lines, then fade to black. Sometimes it will get garbled and almost shake. Other times it will come up black from the get go (no Lenovo post screen). I've tried swapping in another inverter board but the issue remained, so it does not appear to be that. It will not do it for hours, then it will come back. Currently it's doing it consistently enough to render the machine unusable. My question is, is there a way I can confirm this is an issue with the LCD before I spring for a new display. Also, is there a way to completely disconnect the LCD but still use the VGA output to an external display (for trouble shooting and as a workaround). Currently when the internal LCD is acting up the external VGA display either does not work at all or will blink on and off as if it's trying to reset the signal to the internal display. Selecting fn - f7 does not seem to solve this.

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

[BillMorrow]

my guess is something with the GPU or related parts..
if the LCD was kaput then an external display would (or SHOULD) work just fine..
the T60 knows when an external display is connected and it will turn it on..

your symptoms seem to indicate something between the system and LCD and not the LCD..

[Lefters]

Yea, sounds logical. Is the GPU on this box a replaceable part?

[Marin85]

Maybe it´s a good idea to move the thread to the T60 subforum in case someone has the same problem...

[Lefters]

I assume this is something the admins would do?

On reading up it looks like the GPU is integrated on the motherboard, so I guess that answers that question. I see that there's a dock available that has a PCI-E slot, but at $300.00 + for the dock + the cost of a card that does not seem that cost effective (though if someone can confirm that this could be set up to bypass the internal video chip it might be a solution). Are there any other serviceable parts that could be contributing to this behavior?