I’m trying to find a supplier of the small brass bushes that the screws screw into under laptop hinges etc. does anyone...

possibly not - there are a number of different types of display cable socket found on both the back of the screen and on the motherboard itself. If you are going to replace ANY internal part, it’s always best to get one for your specific make and model.

I agree with Jayeff, Sounds very much like you need to replace the BIOS coin battery. Windows is very date and time reliant, and I have seen many ‘weird’ things happen when the BIOS date and time is wrong.

You should have a mini-VGA port on the side of your ibook. You’ll need to get a mini-VGA (male) to VGA (male) cable, plug the mini-VGA end of the cable into that port [it’ll have a picture of a monitor by it), and the other end into pretty much any PC monitor. If you get a picture on the external monitor then the issue is either with your built in screen (which will need to be replaced), or the graphics driver is corrupted (which you should easily be able to re-download and re-install using the external monitor). If you don’t get a picture on the external monitor either, chances are it’s the on-Board graphics chip [meaning you’ll likely need to replace the motherboard].

Try Ebay or something similar. You might have to buy another [damaged] Surface pro (spares or repair) and take the ribbon cable of that one, but it should be a faily simple task