Well, i've been letting my bro borrow my old lcd which is a gateway FPD1500, and he came to me the other day and said that it wouldn't turn on anymore. So i brought it into my room and put it on my system to see what i could make of it. I plugged it into the extra DVI slot on my video card and went to see if it was detected. Oddly enough it was and even allowed me to extend my desktop onto it, but the screen itself never recieves a signal. The power light still comes on but it glows orange instead of its usual green. I was wondering if there is a way to tell if the mainboard went out on it and not the LCD itself, because i can get a replacement mainboard for like 20 dollars, but the LCD is a bit more.

I'm not all that great with screens, so does anybody know if the scenario sounds like a blown mainboard or not? i just read somewhere that is the may be the problem. To let you know, the screen seemed to operate just fine up until the incident, it never flickered, or lost signal or anything that would give away the fact that it was breaking down.

It is more likely the voltage inverter is dead than the mainboard is dead. On a laptop the voltage inverter, which supplies high voltage to the backlight in the LCD display, is a module - I don't know if that applies to a monitor too - it may be built into the monitor's board.
The fact the led is orange indicates to me it is more likely the voltage converter is dead, or the board is dead, than the backlight is dead. You get no display or a very dim sdisplay in either case, but usually the led is green if the backlight is dead.

For some info about replacing a voltage inverter or backlight, and what some typical symptoms are, see response 5 in this:
http://www.computing.net/hardware/w...

Ok, i read the symptoms and solutions, and it probally is the inverter that has died. If the mainboard had died, i don't think that the computer would be able to detect the native res and refresh rate of the screen, which it is still able to do. Like i said, i don't know alot about monitors, but i have seen the inverters on laptop montiors before and the inverter on this monitor is separate from the mainboard, but rather is connected to it via a slender cable just like a laptop one is.

So, does this mean that if the innverter died, then the the backlight, and the LCD itself wouldn't be able to get power, or does it just power the backlight only. If it powers both the LCD and the backlight, then it probally is the inverter, otherwise it could be either the inverter or mainboard. thanks again

LCD = liquid crystal display. The liquid crystal pixels themselves do not produce light. They modify (color), or don't modify at all (white), or block (black out) the white light coming through the screen from the backlight (or backlights in some cases).
If the inverter is dead, the backlight, which is actually a CCFL, a cold cathode flourescent lamp, doesn't get the required high voltage it needs, and cannot produce light.
Replacing the voltage inverter module is a relatively easy and cheap thing to try.
It's possible the board that controls the LCD assembly is defective, or the LCD assembly itself is defective (e.g. if the monitor or laptop was dropped) , but that's much less likely.
Your symptoms don't point to a defective backlight, but could point to a burnt out one, if you have only one and not two or more.