Display has gone haywire - all I get is a line across the screen

So, I'm more than a little out of my element when working with my PowerBook but I really want to save this computer and I hope you guys can help. When I turn it on it makes the harmonious "bow" noise and then the gray start-up screen with the apple in the middle shows up and it's all moving along like normal. But then when it's supposed to show my main desktop screen the screen instead goes entirely black except for one strip that runs the length of the monitor. When I put a DVD into it the machine autostarts it and I can hear sound just fine but still the display is wacky. Is there anything I can do? I wouldn't mind hooking it up to an external monitor but I just don't know how. Can anyone point me in the right (and hopefully affordable) direction?

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
You don't say anything about which 15" Powerbook model you have, so in general, it may have come with a DVI to VGA adapter, which is what you could use that to attach a cable going to an external monitor that requires a regular PC cable. Or, if your external monitor accepts a DVI cable, you could use that connection.
If you can hook up an external monitor, and if it works, I would want to run the Apple hardware test, or either of the TechTools programs would work too. The hardware test will test the video hardware, and point out any issues. The Apple hardware test is on the original OS X disks that shipped with your machine (unless you have the first Powerbooks shipped, in which case they are online).

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