Black Screen Of Death Mystery!

Hello, I have a mid-2012 Retina Macbook with the Black Screen of Death and no HDMI out.

However, the computer is alive. I am able to get in with voiceover and Airplay and stream it to my Roku.

The mystery is this: Twice the screen has actually come on. So it's not the screen itself. I'm not sure what happened the first time, but the second time, I had turned if off airplay, shut the machine, opened it after awhile. Screen awoke and worked fine. However when I restarted, it went black again. I wish I had tested the HDMI at that time but did not.

The Apple logo doesn't light. When I shine a light through it, the screen is still black.

• If the screen was out, it wouldn't randomly light, right?
• If the cable was bad, that time when it was working, would it have booted back to a black screen when the screen position wasn't touched at all?
• If it were only the cable, I'd have HDMI out, right?
• Would a bad logic board cause these symptoms?

I have tried all the usual suggestions:

• Booting in Safe Mode
• Resetting PRAM
• Resetting NVRAM
• Moving the display back and forth slowl
• Doing something where you hit S and turn it on (don't recall the sequence now
• Changing the sleep settings and display sleep settings to never slee
• Checking and unchecking automatic graphics switching,
• Leaving food out to coax out the machine gremlins

The only things I have yet to do are:

1) upgrade to Catalina (nervous since I will lose the screen upon reboot)

2) Run a hardware scan (same reason)

3) Try to take anything apart

4) Consult an exorcist or for that matter an Apple Store.

If it's relevant:

I did have issues with the screen where it needed to be propped up, then it got better

I did drop it once unfortunately shortly before the black screen of death

It has had trouble waking up from sleep for some time

The battery has shown a service battery error for some time. The (independent) technician replaced it in 2020 with not the correct battery, but what she had at the time. I contacted her during the warranty period, but got caught up in other things. Then I contacted her two weeks out of warranty she said she didn't work for free and it would be another 250 bucks to change it again so I figured I'd live with it. and just go elsewhere. My fault I guess but end result is it didn't get fixed. It still gets roughly two hours before needing to be recharged.

Welcome any assistance figuring out what might be wrong here. It's old, but this machine is my baby and is a great workhorse

Thank you