Display is going plaid

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SMDP

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Has anyone seen a display go plaid before? Anyone know what might cause it? We are able to take a screen shot of it so I don't believe that it can be a hardware problem. A screen shot of the problem is attached to this post, please take a look. Any feedback would be really helpful.

It's a 20" imac, 1.8GHz PowerPC G5, running 10.4.11.
 

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I forgot to mention that this problem will go away and reappear. It is not a permanent condition.
 
Thanks. The computer does fall in that serial range so we are going to take it in. Hopefully this does fix it.
 
Another thing you might want to check would be RAM. Also RAM gone bad can cause that - but that looks more like vram. Nevertheless, if you have the discs that shipped with that Mac, run Apple Hardware Test from them, in looped mode (ctrl-L after language selection, the same shortcut to quit it) and let it run for a few hours at least in extended. It should report something either about RAM, video card or something else.
 
My 2006 MBP showed the dreaded fractal plaid screen this summer after I stupidly left it sleeping in my bag - all the time. I was able to start in single user mode but still showed checkerboard image superimposed on screen and MBP would not recognize airport, speakers or any peripherals - sort of a "Tommy - deaf, dumb and blind kid" mode. Ethernet and printing worked when plugged in. More research led me to extensive posts about cooked GPU/video cards - more accurately solder failure under the card. Tried the heat gun/aluminum foil method of solder reflow repair which worked! Installed smcFC which is both a thermometer and thermostat allowing monitoring and control of temp. In pulling motherboard and fans I noticed an inherent design flaw - the air intake and fan exhaust are grills 1/16" from the cover hinge. Just as covering a car's radiator makes it run hot I believe this restricted air flow is a fundamental design flaw in a a great laptop housed in an aluminum frying pan.
Case was too hot to touch pre fan app, smcFC showed 170 F @ 1100 rpm, 5 minutes at 6000 rpm pulled temp down to 100, 3300 rpm running a slight fever of 112 which is a bearable balance of noise/bare leg comfort.
 
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