I'm running Slackware 14.2, 32-bit. The computer is an HP xw4600 desktop workstation. The video card is an Nvidia Quadro NVS 290 PCI Express. I use an Nvidia legacy driver (it's an old machine, probably going on 10 years old.)

I stepped away from the machine for a while, and when I cam back the monitor was fluctuating rapidly and everything was frozen. I had to use the Magic System key to reboot.

Upon rebooting, the initial screen had a series of blue vertical lines running through it. The lilo screen looked fine. When the OS booted I saw a string of numbers followed by a bizarre combination of upper and lower case text.

The boot up sequence ran correctly right up until the machine went into runlevel 4. The screen stayed dark. I couldn't even switch to a console--nothing would show.

I don't have another video card to try.

Does this sound like a video card issue or might it be something else? I didn't find anything helpful on searching for an answer.