plaid screen, rolling video

[Tom R. no spam]

Just an FYI.  My 700MHz 16VRAM 12", which has been very reliable
for the past > 1 year, showed a crazy screen when I opened it to
unsleep it last night.  A variety of stuff didn't get it to work
right, so I went to the local Apple Store at opening this morning.
The tech guy seemed familiar with the problem (which looked like
what others on this list have described a few times in the past).
His keywords for it were as in the subject of this post: "plaid
screen, rolling video".  He said there were no KB articles.

I had had to powerbutton power off to shut down.  Restart got
chimes but then just a dark--ie not on--screen; restart from a
DiskWarrior CD got a grey screen with a full-width darker gray
band scrolling top to bottom.  The AppleStore tech started up,
then started pinching around the edge of the screen, which got
the display to show the Desktop background irregularly.  He then
pressed down on the iBook bottom half's top, all along the hinge
edge of that top, ie between the keyboard and the hinge "edge",
and the display became more visible, with some plaiding.

He said the problem could be the connector between the bottom
and the screen going bad, or a bad video chip.  During
discussion, he pressed on the iBook bottom half's top surface
just toward the middle from the left speaker, and also less
often just toward the middle from the right speaker, while
talking about the video chip, as tho those pressings were
related to the video chip.

A woman who came in later (after I had copied off all my
necessary stuff onto my external FW HD with my iBook in
FireWire target disk mode to one of the store's desktop
units, before deleting that stuff from the iBook, 1+ hours
but well worth it since I need to use that stuff before I'll
get the iBook back), had a tiBook with vertical lines in the
display sometimes, she said.  I didn't pay much attention,
but did see that the tech guys' 1st action on her problem
was also to pinch around the screen edge.  The (simple) FW
target disk mode screen display showed fine on my iBook,
with no plaiding.   A later restart of my iBook, so I could
change my password to something simple and uninformative
before giving it to them, got the display looking ok.

They took it for repair (AppleCare :-) ) without hesitation.
The receipt seems to show the charge would have been $100 for
labor and $180 for parts, but as I sit writing this with the
receipt elsewhere I'm not sure if that $280 was a set  cost
or just a provisional estimate.

I had them include a highlighted note to the repair people,
that if anything had to be done with the HD to phone me 1st
so I can decide about data recovery.  The Store tech guy said
there was no ordinary provision to return a bad HD to me if
it were to have to be replaced, tho that would seem to be
a necessary option for me (to do my own data recovery how I
might choose, or to ensure data destruction to my standards)
and no loss to Apple.  Like taking your car to a mechanic and
getting to keep any replaced non-core-charge parts.