I have already searched and tried pretty much everything, a couple different times over the years searching and trying things and have never resolved this.

I have Sony VPCF115FM gen 1 i7 laptop with GT 330M GPU. When I use the appropriate proprietary nvidia driver, then if I switch to tty i.e. ctrl+alt+F2 the screen goes blank. (I can in fact login blind and execute commands, just cannot see anything.). ctrl+alt+F7 all is well again.

The only people with exact problem I find when searching are from many years ago and they resolved with newer version of driver. I'm using much later version than them, and also what I understand to be the final update by nvidia for this driver which only supports up to linux kernel 5.4. Which is fine.

I happen to have another computer with a video card that uses exact same driver, an amd desktop, but it has nvidia splash screen during boot, and tty works. This problematic Sony has neither.

I used to have a similar Nvidia card/driver, and I experienced the following:
- switching to tty, the driver could not provide the exact same resolution as for the GUI, and it switched to something lower
So maybe your monitor cannot handle that different resolution and switches itself off?

Your mentioning it works on a different physical machine might corroborate this. Try switching monitors.

I'm using the internal display panel of the laptop. And it can display lower resolution modes, because when I set the grub resolution to values like 640x480 or 1024x768, it changes its menu. At this point I'd settle for any resolution tty, even 640x480 is better than nothing.

Have you tried switching monitors?

Sorry, you completely lost me there. What is an "internal display panel" and what does it do?

Have you tried switching monitors?

I dunno if you're playing dumb or not. You realize this is the laptop section? You realize I mentioned laptop in the first post? Are you familiar with laptop computer? They're a fancy invention that combines computer, keyboard, pointing device, and display into one device! No monitor needed.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=display+panel

The display panel is the panel that displays video. It is the "screen" if you will. Flat panel monitors use them too, although they were first in laptops, originally lcd, but technology has advanced. TFT. OLED. More info https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...ence,5394.html

By internal I mean built in. As in not external. As that's what laptops do, they have everything internal. I am using the internal display panel. That means I am not using an external monitor.

I hope all is clear now. I have not tried a monitor because I don't use a monitor, even if it worked on a monitor, it wouldn't solve the problem because I don't normally have a monitor attached and not planning on buying one to workaround this, looking for software solution.

Right... sorry if you should feel that way.

Anyhow, all cleared up now.

Isn't this a hybrid/dual graphics setup then?

I dont know what a hybrid/dual graphics setup is, but I think not. I have the one and only GPU as described in first post.