I need help with an old Solo 9550. -This one's a doozy!

Hiya, folks-

My first laptop was a Solo 2300, in PERFECT condition, with original bag and all accessories- a yard sale STEAL at only TEN BUCKS!
I then bought a Solo 9550 off Ebay, having no laptop experience other than the 2300, and , well... you go with what you know, ya know?

Well despite the 9550's faults, I grew to like it, and it served me well until recently, when it simply died on me. Five years of being on 24/7 (pretty much), in a shop environment with silver, steel, and gold dust in the air.

I just recently purchased a "New" chassis, which includes motherboard and LCD. Still had the "factory protective stickers" on. When I inspected it after pulling the stickers, I concluded that it really is of new stock, and I'm a real pessimistic skeptic. No sign of scratches inside where components would be installed or slid into, etc.

It didn't include CPU,RAM, HDD, CD/ROM, Floppy, or Battery. I bought a new battery, and used all the other components from the 9550 that died. The HDD and CD-RW/DVD were from my Dell I9200, as I upgraded both on that machine, and are little over two years old.
I was able to boot right up using the old HDD without reinstalling, and I was very pleased with my "New" Solo 9550...
...for about two hours.

I now have a persistent, but not consistant problem that is effecting the video driver. It shuts down W2kPro with a BSOD that only flashes before shutdown. The error is "0x000000B4". I've looked this up extensively, and it's apparently due to the video driver conflicting with something else... an "address" conflict.
I've changed the BIOS settings every which way, and the problem redevelops. I change the BIOS settings back, or to default settings, and it goes away fro a few minutes, and redevelops. Sometimes the Gateway boot screen is effected, sometimes not. Even the BIOS screen is effected on occasion.

The visual effect is evenly spaced pairs of white flickering vertical lines.

This machine is equipped with an Nvidia 32 MB card. I can't exactly tell on the old motherboard where the "card" is, otherwise I would try to swap it out and see what happens.

Things I've tried:

Pulled the CMOS battery for an hour.
Reset the BIOS defaults, reassigned IRQ addresses for ports, reassigned CD/ROM as HDD 0 slave, and just about every conceivable BIOS configuration arrangement I can think of.
Pulled each RAM (128MB each) individually.
Reseated and reapplied the crap on the CPU (1066 Tualitin)
Yanked CD-RW/DVD + Floppy + Battery.
Reinstalled OS.
Swapped to different HDD, reinstalled OS.

*sigh*
I've spent about 18 hours on this thing. It's killing me. Don't know what to do.

I can't tell if heat is effecting it or not. It doesn't seem to be.
BIOS is the most recent one.
It does not see the floppy at all. I cannot boot to the floppy to reflash the BIOS.
At one point, it seemed fine and the OS "found new hardware"...-The USB root hub, which I declined to install, just to see what would happen. I don't remember if it reinstalled, or what. After so long, I started to tire and I realize I should've been taking notes. (I never thought it would take such an effort when I started, though.)

This seems to be a hardware address or driver conflict issue. Are there jumpers on the mobo that I'm unaware of?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, all.

Well, I just got finished taking the whole thing apart, inspecting it for cracks in any circuitry, dark spots, anything strange, and found nothing. I reassembled it and the problem persists.
It's not using the display adapter (Nvidia GeForce 2 Go). It's in VGA mode, and the screen still has flickering lines.
I think the video card is hosed. Trouble is, I think maybe this is from a batch of "seconds" that the Ebay vendor got his hands on. The chip is intergrated with the mobo, btw.
Time for trying to get money back. (Yeah, right. )

-You were right about the DVD, though. Starting it without the DVD in made it check the floppy like it's supposed to.

Yes, I've swapped out RAM, too. I can't see any other explaination. I'm just suprised because this mobo & chassis really is new as advertised. There's no sign of wear or use at all.
I've sent the vendor an email. I'll update the thread as it unfolds.

Well, it's booting with Nvidia installed, and all the hardware installed, too. No conflicts, and it's checking the FHH like it's supposed to upon bootup.
But if I lift it, or move the screen, it flexes, and I get a quick bluescreen followed by shut down, or I get lines on the screen.
It's not the panel. The hinges are new & tight, and the laptop shuts down if I move the screen even if it is unplugged from the motherboard.
I can't seem to pinpoint where the physical problem is, but I have a suspiscion. Nearly every component interfaces with modules that plug into the motherboard. When I disassembled it, I was suprised to find one module that handles the HDD, FDD, and battery. It's like the heart of the whole motherboard.
I'm hoping that the plug on this module is tweaked somehow, and one contact is intermittently functioning properly. I'll swap it out with the one from my old mobo, hoping of course that it's not what failed on that one.

If that doesn't work, in the pile it goes..

No, the frustration began to outweigh the value of the computer after a few days. Then that frustration shifted from being pissed at the hi-tech paperweight to being pissed at the time wasted, as I could've been working on something productive that would have netted me ten times the $ the laptop cost.

It sits down in my shop, still on the bench, still all hooked up, and occasionally while I'm working, I turn it on to see if it feels like running.
Restarting immediately after BSODing on me was just a Windows setting, which I fixed (it was set to reboot automatically). Now I can get a chance to read the errors. I get a few different ones and when I get that itch to work on her again, I will begin writing them all down with the conditions/changes I've made to make them occur.

I still think it's a broken soldering on the board somewhere, or a component plug-in interface on the board that is intermittently making contact. I never did exclude that possibility from the beginning since the problem started out as random, and unrelated to heat. I know that software or driver issues can present themselves that way, too, but I became convinced that this was the motherboard when I had a run of several hours (which did include several manual shut downs and restarts) where I could make the problem with the "floating, blinking vertical pairs of lines" appear or disappear by tweaking on the chassis.
I tried to pinpoint the area, and concluded that a particular component plugged into the mobo might be to blame- an interface for the HDD, FDD and battery. I swapped that out, along with two other of the five plug-in mini boards from my old 9550, and reassembled with no change. -Cept that I can't seem to duplicate that instance where I seemed to have control of the problem.

I tried to reflash the BIOS according to the Gateway site instructions, but it calls for the use of an IBM formatted floppy. Nearest place for me to get new floppies is about 40 miles away, so it's not like I'm just gonna hop in the car and go down into town for that.
I tried to do it with what I thought was a fresh (unused) IBM floppy, but it didn't like it. I can't really vouch for the virginity of that floppy, so I have to conclude that it must've gotten formatted at some point.

...Is there a site where I can download IBM formatting software?