I was running v2.00beta13 of the software and HiJack v300 for a while now, but that's it for the software modifications. Nothing else fancy, I'm a hardware guy. Anyway, I updated all the software just to be sure (again with v2.00beta13 and HiJack v300) but the problem is still there. And it's present during the bootup animation.

I saw the faq items about fuses and like you say, i would expect to see something different. It's not really even garbled, it's just this column of pixels on the left side. Another thing - it's a bit hard to tell, but i think the rest of the display gets slightly dimmer when the bars show up. I had the dimmer brightness turned to 40% and the bars were cycling on and off for a bit.

I'm not sure if it's the cable, but I can probably check that.

I'm really thinking this is a hardware thing... with the VFD itself. Sometimes the bars appear to fade in. It happens quickly, but you can still see it fading - it's not that it just switches on quickly.