Laptop recycle.

I have a "broken" laptop... it actually runs fine, I have just installed the latest Vista version and it runs nice... only thing is the screen.. it kinda broke off.
So I now use the computer/keyboard part as a computer and have an external monitor connected.
which means I have a laptop screen which I don't use much at the moment...

it is an Acer Travelmate 220 (I will get details of the screen soon) If someone could tell me how to make it into a normal monitor for a normal computer, it would be very nice :D

[edit] screen is a LG-Philips LP141XB, 14.1", 1024x768

No ones actually used a laptop screen as a standalone as of yet, so good luck! (And trust me I've looked...)

If anyone wants to do it, they've got a long experiment ahead of them.

to chedabob: Have you looked on ebay? That's where I got the needed parts to salvage my laptop.

Well, I was just talking with a friend at a major graphics card company (and no I am not in canada), and he told me that if it is a fairly recent laptop, the lcd screen will plug directly into an onboard video card (knew that already). and that the connector of said lcd is standard across all (or most) laptops and all someone would have to do is get the pinout information for the lcd to gfx cable and create an adapter. Heh sounds easy enough... Now where to get that info...

Just a thought, but my company has a great relationship with a company that makes custom cables, so I will send them an email to see if they can come up with something (thanks to my bud here at work for suggesting it). Hell they made me a custom cable to connect my sgi presenter 1280 to my O2 (since I could not find the cable anywhere)

EDIT: (presenter link) http://www.schrotthal.de/sgi/presenter/dirindex.html

multimeter?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chedabob

multimeter?

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more like logic analyzer to figure out all the signals...

yeah, the pin information is all I need... but I don't know where to find it...

Well it turns out that the signals are NOT compatable and you would need a converter card. Kind of rules out the _inexpensive_ solution. These guys can help you. I would call them with the model and see if thier card works.

http://store.earthlcd.com/

im sure i saw some guys hack a laptop lcd for vga input, but from the way the article was worded, it sounded like it was the first of its kind, because laptops use some crazy pinout, and it requires heaps of hardware. id assume that maybe the display driver is onboard, rather than on traditional lcds behind the display. (hence why there is no bulge on the back of laptops).

spose you could possibly just extend the ribbon cables, sit the laptop inside the case, and mount the lcd somewhere. then run windows and sammurize. you would have to take external sensor input though, cos otherwise you would get the laptops temperature, not your pc.

EDIT: Damn those earthlcds are cool, but so expensive. their 2.5" touchscreen is like the price of 2 ds lites. Whos up for homebrewing some DS?

I found a link to a story about some french guys who did it...

here

there is a bit more work to it than just soldering the connector on...
I also found a datasheet for my screen, with pin out and stuff...
we'll see if I can get it to work;)

^^

thats the one i was saying about

turns out that on a pc it goes GFX Card -> Lcd display driver -> Panel, whereas on a laptop, it doesnt have the lcd display driver. the laptop talks straight to the panel, in a non-standard format. not VGA, so you have to write a lcd driver that converts vga to lcd (its almost the same for each lcd, but i guess with slight variations, for things like pixel counts and timings).