Gateway 610x has flaky video.

...

What your friend owns is basically a non-portable notebook computer system.
The specs. I found state that the graphics are Radeon 9200 AGP with 128MB of
dedicated RAM (from memory, don't kill me if I got that wrong). Other
specs. I found state that this graphics solution is a custom ATI solution.
I read that as, "we used a notebook mainboard to pack a PC into the case of
an LCD monitor". Not a bad idea as long as it works OK. But how do you
repair it?

There is no good way to deal with faulty video on this unit, I'm afraid.
AGP refers to the bus used, NOT a graphics card expansion slot. I would be
shocked to discover that this 610X beast has an actual AGP graphics card
expansion slot. BUT WAIT! There's another problem. The specs. I found
state that the beast has a proprietary, ***160W*** power supply (yikes, I'm
surprised a P4 processor will even boot with that!). So even in the HIGHLY
UNLIKELY event that the graphics card could be replaced, you'd have to
somehow replace a non-replaceable power supply, as well!!! No video card
that's not built-into a mainboard (ie, notebook style) is going to run off
of a 160W power supply. Most AGP video cards specify 300W, MINIMUM, or
greater.

There's another fly in the ointment. As this is an all-in-one type of box,
the problem could be in the LCD display circuitry. So...the graphics card
you can't replace would require a new power supply which you can't replace,
only to discover that after you've jumped through all those hoops, you might
be back where you started. (shit!)

You've got two choices:
1) Assuming that the pc is out of warranty, you can pay gateway hundreds of
dollars to fix it. It can not be repaired by anybody who is not a gateway
authorized service center, due to all the proprietary parts used to build
the thing. I don't suggest you choose this route, as the repair cost would
likely GREATLY exceed the purchase price of a whole new computer system and
monitor with better specifications. Even if you get the problem diagnosed
(not fixed), the diagnosis alone would likely cost about half as much as a
whole new computer system plus monitor.

2) Buy a cheap PC and monitor to replace the whole thing. I've read of
some fantastic deals lately on Windows XP systems, because Vista was just
released.

Of course, all of what I write above could be wrong, and maybe there is an
easy fix that I've overlooked. I don't think so, though. -Dave