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Wallstreet screen artifacts

beachycove

Well-known member
My Wallstreet, 266mhz, 14" screen, has developed screen artifacts that I would like to ask the wisdom of the group about. I have some spare parts here, but don't want just to go swapping random parts in and out, as these machines would be tedious to work on in that way.

I am looking for the likely cause of the following pattern of behaviour.

On startup, I get this (in this case, I restarted and got the disk utility, but it is the same however you boot):

photo 1.JPG

That pattern would ordinarily make me think that a screen cable was pinched or the like. However, what happens if I begin to use applications is that the screen artifacts move around with the windows. The following images show this behaviour, within a minute or two of the first image (these pics were all just taken in rapid sequence).

Here we have BBEdit open in its initial location on screen, and obviously unusable:

photo 2.JPG

Then this happens if the BBEdit window is dragged a couple of inches  to the right of the screen, which also makes the artifacts extend a couple of inches to the right:

photo 3.JPG

And similarly, when the window is dragged down to the bottom of the screen, the artifacts move down and are again extended:

photo 4.JPG

I am inclined to think that the likely culprit is VRAM or perhaps the graphics card, because of this behaviour. That would mean that the logic board needs replaced.

Would that be a sensible working hypothesis? The implication would be that I could leave software, screen, and video cables alone and concentrate on replacing the logic board only.

Your $0.02 would be valued!

 
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