Screen goes black on 867 Powerbook . . .

Looking for some advice.
I have an 867 titanium PB which was running 10.5.6 when my problem started. Yesterday the screen went black, although you can see a ghost image of the desktop in the right light.
Things I have tried:
Rebuilt permissions
Verified disk
Zapped the PRAM
switched to another user account
Booted off an OS X install disk
Hooked up an external monitor to the PB and found that the second display works fine, so the PB video board seems to be working.
Updated to 10.5.7 (no difference)
I also tried to boot off an OS X install disk to access the hardware testing tools, but the PB screen is too dark to tell what is going on. Don't want to accidently erase the drive trying to run a diagnostic.
When I hook the PB up to an external monitor and turn on "Mirror displays" I can revive the PB screen by changing its resolution to the normal setting. Then, both monitors will work fine. And the PB screen is at its expected illumination.
But when not hooked up to a second monitor, the PB screen will go black at some point. If I try to reset its display resolution without a second monitor, all I get is a brief flash of the screen at full illumination, then it returns to black instantly.
Question: Am I dealing with a system corruption issue, a failed monitor backlight, video board, failed clock battery which can't hold onto the monitor illumination settings, or something else altogether?
(It's actually my teenager's PB now so he'll be bummed if I pronounce it dead . . .)
TIA
Thomas

I think your inverter board might've flown south. Thats what happened on my PB the screen would go on for a few seconds and the it would go dark, so I would say that is most likely the problem.

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