MBP 17" i5: Constal Flickering of lines
 

I am trying to make the external display work on my MBP but all I get is continuous flickering and lines of color, but there is nothing on screen.

From the specs I have your device does not support the native resolution of the Apple display you have (1920x1200). The maximum supported resolution is 1600x1200 (or 1920x1080 widescreen).
Apple Cinema displays don't have an onboard scaler so we can't show any picture with that hardware combination.