R31 active horizontal lines all over the screen

[Popliteus]

First of all, I searched for probably 20 mins and didn't find anything.
Have an R31 that started having a problem out of the blue - a bunch of little lines are covering pretty much the whole screen... they are thin, red/pink in color, horizontal, and they come and go.

It's always there, but they change location all the time. It seems worse after the computer has been running a while. They do not block out everything, they are semi opaque. When looking at the lines closely, they are made of hundreds of little dots and vertical lines. They change frequently. What on earth?

[Popliteus]

and i reinstalled the video drivers - no luck

[rkawakami]

The type of video problem you are describing is usually due to a bad connection of the graphics chip (GPU) to the motherboard and/or an issue with the video memory, but there can be other areas that cause it. Have you tried checking the display on an external monitor to see if it shows the same video problem?

Taking the easiest checks first (does not require any $$$ or disassembly of the system): As it appears that the R31 uses shared system memory for the video display, you should try running memtest86+ for several passes and see if that finds any errors:

http://www.memtest.org/

You could also try running some tests in PC Doctor for DOS:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-41438

I'm assuming that this version of PC Doctor for the R31 has the same Video tests that are in other versions I use.

If those programs do not detect any problems, then it would be time to open up the system. Using the Hardware Maintenance Manual (HMM):

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-39797

remove and then re-attach (i.e., re-seat) the ribbon cable going to the LCD. This appears to be covered under section 1090 of the HMM. Note: There's two different versions (R31 Part 1 and R31 Part 2) that covers different type numbers. Find the one that applies to your system and refer to the appropriate section.

If re-seating the ribbon cable on the motherboard does not fix the display problem, then you could try re-seating the other end of that cable; where it plugs into the back of the LCD panel. That requires a little bit more disassembly. If you do this, closely inspect the entire length of the cable to see if there's any cracks in it.

If that also does not solve your problem, then I would lean towards something on the motherboard as the root of the problem. Since the R31 does not use the same ATI graphics chip that sometimes is a problem on A3x and T4x systems, I don't know if you perform a solder re-flow.

[Popliteus]

thank you very much for the informative reply - I was actually wondering if it was a loose graphics cable. I will investigate.