R40 display or hardware problem

[kohan25]

I have an R40 that developed a problem with the display. I found that the ribbon cable for the display was defective (bad solder at the connector) and replaced it with used one for this model I found on ebay. It worked fine for months and now it has a different problem and doing some strange things like distorted screen, double charactors, on and off flickering etc. I thought it was the cable I replaced but it wasnt which was a totally differnt problem than I had before. I connected it to a monitor and it did the same thing. I thought a virus? so I swapped the hard drive and the same problems. I am thinking it is the motherboard or video card which I am unsure if that is part of the motherboard (have not had it apart yet). Any suggestions.

[kajencik]

I'm afraid you are experiencing the common GPU problem, there are many threads about this, try to search something like "garbled screen" or "soldering gpu".

Anyway, the problem is in the connection of the GPU to a mainboard, due to contruction issues od R40 (and other models, I'm not sure exactly which of them) and twisting the nobtebook while you carry it, by the time, some of the pins of the GPU loses it's connection to the MB, and thats which is probably causing your problem.

There are basicaly two solutions:

1) get a new mainboard (from ebay, etc), but beware, it's possible that they will be selling one with same failure as yours, as this is unfortunately quite common problem with R40 and others.

2) soldering the GPU - This is what I don't know excatly, I have no equipment, and maybe also skills to do that, try to search around, or maybe anyone will tell more about it.

[kohan25]

thanks very much. I will look at this tonight to see if I can find it. Without trying to sound stupid, where abouts would the GPU be located and is it marked in any way. (I have only done a T22 rebuild and havent opened one of these yet.
Thanks