[rescue] Anyone dealt with a SPARCle laptop with bad video?

[Earl Baugh]

> > I finally got the PC133 ECC SDRAM for my SPARCle laptop from an eBay
> seller
> > in Israel, found a compatible power tip  for my iGo universal power
> supply,
> > and powered up the SPARCle. Alas, I got what looks kinda like interlaced
> > video with missing lines on it.
> > [...]
> > https://www.dropbox.com/sc/poqs5m1wru8tt4f/eG_CDBUuv3
> > https://www.dropbox.com/sc/id0kj5w3grkf4wk/Tj_JPfeTuS
> > [...]
> > Anyone run into this before, and have any ideas on how to fix this if it
> > can be fixed?
>
> So, I _don't_ know.  But, I'll hazard a guess, since I've not seen
> anyone else pipe up.
>
> I wonder whether there's ribbon cable (or one of those circuit traces on
> Kapton film thingies) that's partially come loose, or needs to be
> reseated.
>
> I wonder also whether you need to set the video mode from the
> boot-monitor?  I.e., it's displaying a 8 bit mode when being fed
> 24-bit data?  This is PURE speculation but I've seen things like this
> with laptops in the wrong mode (the bad old days of Linux laptops).
>
> Maybe try to install, and see whether you can get the display into a
> mono or 8-bit mode?
>


You know, I was thinking something similar.
While I've not dealt with this particular model, I did have some RDI ones,
and
something like this happened with the wrong display mode from the boot
monitor...
or something similar to that.  I remember we thought the display was broken
but it ended up being a setting or driver..

Earl