Free Monitor Causes Hair Pulling

I scored a Gateway FPD2185W from the scrap bin at work. It was dead, and had the classic failed capacitors on the power board. Those were replaced, and the signal cable reseated, and the fuse replaced, and now I've got a 21" widescreen LCD on my desk.

. . . running at low resolution. It isn't putting out EDID data from the VGA port, and my Intel 82865G graphics controller won't allow custom resolutions. No 1680 x 1050 goodness for me! Trust me, I spent all afternoon on this, and it's out of the question. The computer is a Dell Dimension 3000 running XP SP3 with up to date drivers, and there is NO AGP HEADER on the motherboard! Just a row of holes where the connector should be! I could get a PCI dual-head video card for it . . . but that's holding up the business end of my fourth monitor output in my computer at work right now. Upgrading the graphics card is likely not going to happen.

I very much hope to be able to get around this problem when I go to a computer a co-worker just gave me. It was increasingly, randomly flaking out . . . possibly due to the dust bunny ranch I evicted from the thing, including dust bridges between components on the high voltage section of the power supply. THAT computer is hip enough to run Windows 7, and I anticipate being able to use ATI's software to set the resolution right, if Windows doesn't want to.

. . . but that will have to wait until I fix some geometry. The case is too tall (by the height of two unused 5-1/4" drive bays) to fit in my desk. I'll either swap to a smaller case (free, off the scrap pile! ) or I'll truncate this one to fit the desk. We'll see!

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Edit/update the next day:

The monitor's power supply hums like a mosquito. My home is quiet and my work station is not so this monitor is likely to go with me to work on Monday.