Hmm. I think the GFX chip has come loose in my iBook G3 900 14″. Apparently the iBook’s had this screen issue with the cable being pinched causing the screen to black out completely after a while when the cable dies. My screen blacked out completely so I though it was that. But if I twist the case a little bit, and reboot, it comes back…same if I put pressure when the GFX chip is. I read that they can become loose if you knock the laptop around a little bit because it was a manufacturing problem and I used to carry it in my bag.

Aparently I can open it up and put a shim in it to pressure it back into place.

Ok my Radeon 9700 Pro is officially dead. My computer doesn’t POST with it. I tried it in another computer that has onboard VGA, switched the BIOS to try to init the AGP card first, and it POSTS, using the onboard!

The heat spreader on the chip heats up, but no matter what I do – remove all devices, use VGA instead of DVI, plug no auxillery power (should cause the card to display “requres additional power” on screen”, I can’t get a picture or a POST beep.

ATI just lost a customer for life. Last card I hard of theirs (9100), the fan died after 10 months, and games strated crashing because the heat was not beaing extracted from the chip. I didn’t notice for 3 months, which meant it was out of warranty. I removed the fan, and passive cooling worked though…but they still seem to have bad quality control (the 9700 Pro here has been RMA’d 3 times).

Never had any problems with NVidia with the GeForce2 MX I had, and that card is STILL going! 6600GT looks appealing…