After reinstalling Slackware, recompiling a 2.6.x kernel, playing with settings, installing drivers, and praying the graphics card wouldn’t die, I’ve got atlas back in its spot underneath my desk. It appears that the graphics card’s fan isn’t working, causing the card to gradually overheat over time. That explains why leaving it off for a day or two would fix the issue, and why if rebooting would slowly make the situation worse. Fortunately, since I use an SSH client on odin to use atlas, I don’t *need* the video card to work correctly or consistently. Despite my victory, atlas will probably not last too much longer. Obviously, the graphics card is an issue, even if I can get around it. I had to borrow one of Sharon’s optical drives (out of seaman) in order to install Slack, and the hard drive in there is as old as atlas itself, putting it at 4 1/2 years old.
This underlines my luck with hardware components. I’ve hardly ever had an optical drive last more than 18 months, but I haven’t lost a hard drive to old age yet. In fact, atlas’ 80GB drive is in odin. I recently install a new WD 400GB in odin and have moved everything of importance off of the old drive. The next step will be to back up everything important on atlas onto odin, in case of doom.