Yep I hear you @Printninja.
That’s not my current situation though.
My life is a little ragged or messy atm (erm…sometime now, but, hey, moving on… ), so if anything, My computer is one of my hindrances in my life.
Ie, sitting at it, not actually getting anything serious done, or manifesting anything of meaning or worth, as my life other important things pile up.
So! I took it as a hint 
from, well you know, the universe or the great big spaghetti monster in the sky or whatever, to re evaluate my life choices and re allocate time and resources some other way which may be more meaningful or productive… and just let the computer lay and rest as I ran around doing some of that and thinking.
Clearing out a dead friends house, who died rather unpleasantly…with plenty of money and no excuses (other than pretty serious medical issues and mental health ones, brought about by years of cannabis abuse - I highly recommend no one goes doesn’t that road, as it aint pretty in the long run) and seeing his paperwork with my name on it, and write a will…underneath it…which he never did…certainly makes one think about stuff.
So I then thought to attack my Mac again -and I have and…utterly bizarrely, it has just fired up from sleep, for the first time, with no artifacts!
I have now swapped to the better graphic card, from the mundane one it has, as it was swapping FROM the 9400 to the 9600 to game and then back again, which seemed to coincide with the start of the issue.
But, after all the stripping, pressing of the mother board in graphicy places, stripping and cleaning the screen connector, disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, umpteen SMC resets (battery wasn’t charging either which made me ponder that…and the date and stuff starting going awry) …it fired back up with the lowly graphic card.
wow.
SO I treated it with kid gloves for a bit… then soak tested it, it survived, then put it to sleep and it would wake with a corrupted but useable screen, which I could log back into, and it would then clear itself up.
yay!
…but still not quite right.
So I gamed with the lowly card…and would have flickering after a while…but it kept working and didnt die.
SO last night, I swapped it to the better card and gamed for HOURS AND HOURS… and
it just worked fine! and … it just woke from sleep the next morning, with no corruption!
WOO HOO.
I could justify this as production testing of hardware to myself. I could even continue to test via some games…but…
So maybe it was the lowly card or something in the SMC controller settings or suchlike to do with that.
…or maybe I need to spend less time at the computer…where I dont earn my living…as life takes me on some weird routes.
I mean …horses?..HORSES? who the hell could have predicted that?
and… they dont use computers, and you cant use computers AND look after horses at the same time.
Maybe the Big Spaghetti monster has other plans for my time and how I should spend it productively
Im so pleased we now have a Random channel on here (which I can never find!)
Edit… oh well, some screen corruption on the wake up screen again on THIS funkier graphic card… which then sorted itself on the second button press.
Sigh…well its working still, so time for several time machine backups and data back ups quick I guess.
At least it doesnt keep switching off now, so if it makes it to the end of a time machine back up Ill be happy. Even though Ive not ever had much success restoring a new system from one of them before.
)
heading up there now.- was composing the Probate solicitors letter - then… the PowerPPC powerman died! aaargh. 3 flashing powere button LEDs… this is relentless!