You know how when you experience strange graphical glitches, the first advice is often "check the cable"? And you know how 99% of the time it is not the cable? And so you often don't even bother checking?

Well, shame on me, because this time it seems like it really was the cable, and I spent the last few weeks getting aggravated about the flickering monitor on my old, rarely used system.

At first I suspected monitor aging (it's a 10-year old DELL 2209WA, with CCFL backlight). The thing is - it only seemed to flicker during full-screen gaming, and never on the desktop. So my next idea was that maybe the GPU was dying (it's a 14-year old Thinkpad T60 with ATI Mobility X1400). But there were never any artifacts, just flicker where the screen blanks out for ~1 second each time. Eventually it got so frequent that games became unplayable.

Finally it struck me to try to replace the DVI cable, because what the heck. Went to disconnect it from the monitor side and what do you know? It was just a bit loose. Tightened it, and for the better part of today - not a single flicker.

So I hope that it is not just acoincidence, and that it really was all there was to it. So, yes, do check the cables sometimes. 😜