I'm wondering if it actually is broken now.
I am installing Lion on it right now, and it seems to be working perfectly.
I looked up the Nvidia BGA failure, and apparently the typical MO of the failure is a black screen (and no video from the DVI port). What I got was a distorted screen with a normal cursor which seemed unaffected (which I thought was odd). I think the seller might have mentioned that the machine needed a new logic board, but he didn't know why because it apparently worked OK for him despite it.
Maybe it's a problem with the RAM/VRAM? My mid '09 Unibody MBP did something similar once, and I determined that the main RAM was partially bad. Replacing it solved the problem. Would doing the same to this MBP fix the problem?
I suppose an AHT is in order. It may not do much, but it can tell me something, I'm sure (running it three to four times is what led me to believe the RAM was going bad on the other one, because it didn't report any errors until the third pass).
c
I am installing Lion on it right now, and it seems to be working perfectly.
I looked up the Nvidia BGA failure, and apparently the typical MO of the failure is a black screen (and no video from the DVI port). What I got was a distorted screen with a normal cursor which seemed unaffected (which I thought was odd). I think the seller might have mentioned that the machine needed a new logic board, but he didn't know why because it apparently worked OK for him despite it.
Maybe it's a problem with the RAM/VRAM? My mid '09 Unibody MBP did something similar once, and I determined that the main RAM was partially bad. Replacing it solved the problem. Would doing the same to this MBP fix the problem?
I suppose an AHT is in order. It may not do much, but it can tell me something, I'm sure (running it three to four times is what led me to believe the RAM was going bad on the other one, because it didn't report any errors until the third pass).
c