Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My sister\u2019s computer has had its second monitor blinking intermittently. It\u2019s been frequent enough to be annoying, but rare enough to be infuriating to diagnose. Over the months she\u2019s had it, we\u2019ve tested out the screens and cables. I\u2019ve even booted it to one of my Linux drives for another project and it still blinked, so it\u2019s not Windows\u2019 fault. The next thing to test is the graphics card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My sister\u2019s graphics card has two HDMI ports for her screens and a DVI port she has set up with an HDMI adapter to a drawing tablet. I swapped it out for one of mine for a couple days, configuring one of my workstations for triple screens and played some games on it. As it continued to hold up, our theory evolved from the card being defective, to it not getting enough power in her computer as my power supply was a little stronger than hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We picked up a new power supply on discount, but I restored our original configuration for over the weekend to see if maybe something I wasn\u2019t controlling for \u2013but did nonetheless\u2013 was the cause, like a buggy driver (unlikely, given it was previously replicated in Linux).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The graphics card behaved without the new power supply up until just over an hour and a half before posting today. Our best guess was that the power cable wasn\u2019t properly seated. Her card takes an 8-pin connection, but it\u2019s being fed by a 6+2 connector. The extra two pin piece could easily have been dislodged slightly some time ago, causing these problems. The search continues. The next step is to replace the power supply and see if that helps. If the card continues to misbehave, we may try the card switch again for a longer period of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Takeaway<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While swapping the cards to begin with, I didn\u2019t keep track of the screws as well as I should have, but someone strongly recommended a bowl. While returning our cards to their proper towers, I relented and my dog decided to walk off with it while I wasn\u2019t looking. It only had a couple screws for the outer case when he took it, and I found it in the other room with some new tooth marks and a wet spot. We recovered one screw off the floor, and the other from under the couch. Next time I mess with computer parts, the bowl goes out of his reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever faced one of your creatures eating [part of] a project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I look forward hearing your answers on in the comments below or on my Discord server<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let\u2019s get started! Did I Fix the Graphics Card or Not? My sister\u2019s computer has had its second monitor blinking intermittently. It\u2019s been frequent enough to be annoying, but rare enough to be infuriating to diagnose. Over the months … <\/p>\n