I have here on the bench a Dell Inspiron 1000. It seems there is a problem with it showing on the display. The only way I can get it to come up on its own display is to do the f8 thing then when i thing it may be prompting me I hit fn f3 and it will show the choices but in a hugh font. backing up. I press the power button and nothing shows up on the screen absolutely nothing not even a flicker. I can only show anything when I press fn f3 after i press f8 but I can only go into safe mode. if i try regular mode it will go ok during the windows logo with the green bar but when it goes from there it goes black and that is it.
I can put an external monitor on and it works fine. I don't see any options in the bios to affect the display.