M
MikeyD
Guest
Hey guys, kind of an odd question looking for advice on the best avenue to take.
I have an old Alienware m7950 laptop that is collecting dust I'd like to turn into a small home server. The problem is the graphics card(s) are dead/dying and the keyboard only partially works.
Keyboard isn't really an issue. I plugged in an external keyboard and I can type commands, the problem is the screen is covered in artifacts due to the graphics card problem, and Windows XP will only use safe-mode resolution. I uninstalled Windows XP and installed CentOS via command-line which was successful (the display seems to work sometimes one out of every 100 or so boot-ups) but when restarting I get the same red artifacts and unfortunately not even a command-line prompt to login or do anything. Here is what it looks like:
The cards are nVidia (too lazy to look up the model but they're old. The PC is probably 8-9 yrs old) I tried re-seating both cards but no luck, I tried removing the slave card and booting with just the master but no luck. I have a couple questions:
1.) Is there a way to boot with just the slave in the master card slot? I haven't had time to try it but I'm assuming not due to the firmware, still I'd like to see if maybe its just the master...
2.) Buying another graphics card is probably not an option as a legacy card that will work will be hard to find and probably expensive. At that point I might as well build a cheap linux box. Is it worth just rebooting this thing 100 times to try and get the screen stable once to just install sshd then just ssh from another PC? Or....
3.) I found a few articles like this about cooking cards to potentially bring them back to life:
http://lifehacker.com/5823227/save-dying-video-cards-with-a-quick-bake-in-the-oven
Has anyone tried this with success/failure? I don't have much to loose at this point but it seems like a long shot.
Thanks for any input.
I have an old Alienware m7950 laptop that is collecting dust I'd like to turn into a small home server. The problem is the graphics card(s) are dead/dying and the keyboard only partially works.
Keyboard isn't really an issue. I plugged in an external keyboard and I can type commands, the problem is the screen is covered in artifacts due to the graphics card problem, and Windows XP will only use safe-mode resolution. I uninstalled Windows XP and installed CentOS via command-line which was successful (the display seems to work sometimes one out of every 100 or so boot-ups) but when restarting I get the same red artifacts and unfortunately not even a command-line prompt to login or do anything. Here is what it looks like:
The cards are nVidia (too lazy to look up the model but they're old. The PC is probably 8-9 yrs old) I tried re-seating both cards but no luck, I tried removing the slave card and booting with just the master but no luck. I have a couple questions:
1.) Is there a way to boot with just the slave in the master card slot? I haven't had time to try it but I'm assuming not due to the firmware, still I'd like to see if maybe its just the master...
2.) Buying another graphics card is probably not an option as a legacy card that will work will be hard to find and probably expensive. At that point I might as well build a cheap linux box. Is it worth just rebooting this thing 100 times to try and get the screen stable once to just install sshd then just ssh from another PC? Or....
3.) I found a few articles like this about cooking cards to potentially bring them back to life:
http://lifehacker.com/5823227/save-dying-video-cards-with-a-quick-bake-in-the-oven
Has anyone tried this with success/failure? I don't have much to loose at this point but it seems like a long shot.
Thanks for any input.
