Can I turn my lcd laptop monitor into a desktop monitor?

hi guys I have a display form a compaq700z 14.1 xga tft and i was wondering if it could be turned into a monitor for a dvd player that goes in the car. i was going to try it out for the kids when we go on trips. Is this so and how can i wire it up? Or just make a mnitor for my desk top to give me more room on my desk.

 

Here is my case:

i have about a dozen Omnibook 6000's, all of them having Hitachi display, 15,0", part number : TX38D85VC1CAA, 0081H A66024

Crap image of the connector: http://i19.ebayimg.com/01/i/04/ec/57/9c_1_sbl.JPG

Switchboard where display is attached, from inside the laptop. connector from poor image above goes to that white part at the middle:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...ndexURL=0&photoDisplayType=2#ebayphotohosting

Question is this - is there a simple way to get any kind of input to these screens [bold]without[/bold] the laptop itself?

i.e. could i build 4 screen display out of these.

 

everything is possible if you have enough money to throw at it, about how important is this to you in terms of Cold Hard Cash? worth $300? $500? $1000? these days it is cheaper to buy then to build, whch makes all of us who were trying to recycle technology just people with a lot of junk around our homes.

I am finding that I can afford to buy what I need these days, and I cannot build it myself for less than double what it costs to buy. hence makes no sense to try and recycle anymore.

(for example = if you want a 4 monitor display - buy 2 dual output video cards >$99 4 15" LCD monitors Approx $125 each. Any windows operating system since windows98 supports multiple monitors( up to 8 video cards and 16 monitors, I think) and video cards so no extra cost there. and your 4 monitor system is about $600, now to make the same system out of old LCD panels, you would need 4 controller cards (about $200 each) HMMMMM and how would you drive 4 controllers at once, that must be another part that we would need lets say that only costs $100(for giggles) and then a way to mount your LCD panels together HMM another $100 (again for giggles) 4 power supplies and etc.... (lets say another $100) so the total to make this ourselves has so far come out to about $1100, and we may find we neeed other items as well, who knows. point is this is not cost effective and does not make sense anymore.)

 

Geekfactor on 15" stripped laptop LCD's is much higher than 15" separate stripped monitors.

Let me ask it this way - how to use a Omnibook's stripped LCD display as monitor without remains of the actual laptop..

 

Might be a bit OT, but situation is this.
I got an old inoperable iMac G4 with a 17'' lcd and i wondered if there's a way of using it's display as a second monitor on a PC. That is, is it possible to connect it to DVI?
Tnx.

 

I don't care what kind of "LCD" from a laptop/notebook/tablet you have
they can be adapted but if you read far enough back in the thread you'll find all kinds of great info that should not need to be repeated over and over. Again, commercial adapters are available that can adapt to some screens but again they may be more expensive than the alternative of buying a readily available screen that just plugs in to your system. A good tech can make the hardware work for a reasonable cost but the project is not for the brain dead or those unfamiliar with wayward electrons. By the way, backlight voltages are in the 1500 plus volt range in some cases and can cause expletive deleted language, also if you read one of my posts you'll learn of a method of eliminating backlight requirements.

 

ByteDawg is Right. I have been trying to explaine that "Anything is possible with enough money!" so I ask is a "Geek Factor project" that takes trash and gives it a extra year or so of life worth the $1000's you could spend to make it happen? when for <$200 you can buy the same item in working order with Warrenty. I don't think so, and believe me I have had some great ideas for using 15" lcd monitors in my truck as the video sysem monitors, placing them in the doors and ceiling and more.... but I can buy Awsome working LCD's made just for that for less than I can build them from junk for, so I can't understand why I would want to spend 6 months or more on trying to create them myslef.

the bottom line is too many people are starting at the end of this thread instead of taking time to look at all the great info we have talked about on the first 5 pages.

so before posting anymore questions like can I do this... first ask yourself a couple questions.
1) have I read the whole thread?
2) do I have so much money in my pocket that I want to throw it away for no good reason?
(for those of you who answer yes to the second question, please let me know how much you are willing to spend and I will put something together for you! I have no problem taking your money! just the cost for my Time will cover a whole new system for my truck as well as make a few payments! *LOL*)

come on people lets be serious here, 10 years ago (hell, maybe even just 5) this would have been worth the time and effort, but today it's Just plain NOT worth it. (unless you are rich!, and if you were this would not even be an option, think about it.)

 

Hi!

I've read most of this thread as I too want to use a display panel from an old laptop on my desktop PC.

The panel is a Samsung LT141x4-156 1024x768 TFT. I also found the LVDS transmitter on the mainboard of the laptop. That's a Texas Instuments SN75LVDS83. I found the specs for this chip and it looks fairly straight-forward. It doesn't seem to have an external clock so I guess it takes the clock from the incoming signal?

In this thread someone mentioned that some nVidia graphics cards have a built-in LVDS transmitter (MX and FX series?). Do I understand this correctly that if I could find out the pin-out for the display cable and for the nVidia chip and just connect the LVDS transmitter's pins to the appropriate pins of the display that go to the LVDS receiver that it might work? Or is there still the timing problem?

Or could I try to use the transmitter from the mainboard and connect it to the graphics card instead of the external DVI transmitter on the card?

I asked Samsung to provide a data sheet for this display because someone in this thread mentioned that they sent one. They replied to me within minutes but said that the panel is EOL and they don't have data sheets anymore..

UPDATE: Samsung sent me the pinout for the LVDS connector. At least something to start with ... ;-)

Chris

 

don't know if anyone is still reading this thread but I did some more research and would like to hear (read) your opinions.

In the datasheet for the LVDS transmitter (the one on the mainboard of the laptop) I found this:



Now, as far as I understand this, all I need to do is to take a graphics card, find the pinout for the GPU (I imagine that's the hardest part) and connect the LVDS transmitter to the GPU according to the above diagram. The 3.3Vcc I can probably take from the graphics card somewhere. And then there is the thing with the backlight but that should not be too difficult.

Opinions please....

Chris

 

Ok i too have a Presario 900z with an LCD dangling from it and screws falling apart from everywhere. I was thinking of creating some sort of interface between it and some sort of standard display cable (DVI,VGA,RCA,S-Vid..etc) perhaps build on this and add a usb touch sensiteve for it to act as a tablet. and if i go crazy enough go wireless and use bluetooth or something.

Anyway i'm a computer eng. and this should be my game but i'm not really a modding enthusiast and i know given time and some money (but still less than buying an LCD) it could be done.

For now i could throw in my two cents and suggest a somwhat neat methodology:

It has been establishied that most LT LCDs use some sort of digital interface. So the easiest route is to go for DVI and somehow interface it with the proprietary TFT pinouts. This saves the headache of DAC and ADC. With the conversion to a 'standard' interface it should be easier to chage to all other 'standard' interfaces.

So it boils down to:
signal levels and data format.

As with [bold]yesyesuk[/bold]'s post we need the data sheets for the pinouts and the datasheets for the DVI standard.

I will perhaps start soon on this project and in my head i'm thinking:

How fast is the frequency of the signals (DVI,LCD)
how long will the signal go.
how is the data encoded.
and finally is EMI (electromagnetic interference) a big issue.

With the result of our collective knowledge (long live the net!)

we could come up with a solution to the dvi side of the 'connection' and then for each LCD connection type it's decoding scheme (i mean how many are there!!) I'm sure there will be just a few data formats and many pin shapes and sizes or else they're just reinventing the wheel with every model and that is not good for business in terms of production/design costs.

My 2 cents worth...
for now!!

 

now that's the spirit ... ;-)

I agree that the best solution would be a DVI-to-LVDS converter, ideally in one chip...
However, I read that one can't buy DVI chips due to the integrated DRM.

In general DVI and LVDS are very similar (both serial differential signal loops) but DVI (TMDS) is transition minimised, which means bits are swapped around. What we would need is a DVI receiver chip with the correct output to feed the LVDS transmitter chip.

The other option I'm persuing at the moment is to tap into the output of a GPU and feed it directly to the LVDS transmitter chip. I bought a few nVidia graphic cards on ebay but none of them uses an external DVI transmitter chip that I can replace with the LVDS transmitter off the laptop mainboard. And the design of the GPU chip itself doesn't allow for wires to be soldered onto it... ;-)))

The frequency the panel was running on when still in the laptop was about 68MHz. The LVDS tansmission frequency then is 7 times that. So we're talking rather high frequencies to fiddle with which makes things slightly more difficult. Since LVDS also transmits H and V sync I hope the panel will sync to several different frequencies. I haven't yet found any info on that though.

I would prefer the DVI-to-LVDS option as this would make the whole thing more universal and not limited to one modded graphics card.

@avatarek: are you in the UK?

yesyes

 

So I guess the "easiest/cheapest" solution (if you're determined to use a Laptop LCD on a desktop) would be to acquire a broken/cracked desktop LCD (perhaps e-bay) and strip the DVI to digital circuitry out of it and interface to the Laptop LCD...although at this point, I have to agree with ByteDawg and others that although it's possible, it's becoming completely impractical.

 

OK, after some more research I have the following information:

#1#
pinout for my the LVDS cable of my panel (Samsung LT141x4-156)
http://yesyesserver.co.uk/display/141x4_156-pin.pdf
Samsung only provided the pinout for 20 pins although the cable has a 34 pin connector. I guess the other 14 pins are for backlight?

#2#
datasheet for the LVDS transmitter used in the laptop the panel is from (Texas Instruments SN75LVDS83)
http://yesyesserver.co.uk/display/sn75lvds83.pdf

#3#
I found a DVI receiver chip (Silicon Image SiI 163B).
http://yesyesserver.co.uk/display/SiI-163B.pdf

If I see this correctly I take the DVI receiver, connect a DVI cable to the receiver's input, the receiver chip converts the signal back to 18bit parallel data, I connect that to the LVDS transmitter's input and out comes the LVDS signal I need for my panel. I'm aware that that does not include any screen adjustments (colour, brightness, contrast, geometry, ...) but I hope this can be done in the graphic card driver.

Does anyone think that could work this way?

The problem now are:
- where to get the DVI receiver chip from?
- where to solder the 2 chips onto? ;-) The pins are a bit too close to each other for a stripboard. Has anyone seen like prototype boards for this kind of chips to buy somewhere? I've build electronic circuits in the past but that's my first project in years and I'm a little out of date what's available these days and where....

Chris

 

or how about that one:
http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0,,765_806_AD9887A,00.html

That would even allow analogue VGA input. But seems to require a 24 bit panel. Though it looks like the LVDS transmitter can "convert" from 24 bits to 18 bits.

Chris

 

Liston all you need to do this is an analog to digital convertor. i did this for my laptop screen and it works great the problom though is it will run you about $90. I got mine on ebay, with a tv tuner as well. If you want to see some pictures of this email me at i'manidiot.com edited by ddp and ill show the pictures or show where to get one. on ebay they ran anywhere from $26 to $72.

 

hi guys, after reading the posts i decided to give it a try
well, thing is...
i have a amilo 1650g laptop with cracked wxga display (the panel actualy works, but the polycarbonate substrate is cracked and under the cracked areas it apear big black spots)
i have a wuxga 15,4 display from n old dell that is functional
i tried to swap the cracked wxga with the wuxga from the dell, but the system does not recognize correctly the wuxga display and the image is distorted
is there a way to make work the wuxga on the amilo1650?
the system recognisez the display as 1600x1200 instead of 1920x1200 ,
and if not can I use the wuxga on a desktopcomp. with dvi output by pin to pin rearrangement?
sorry for my bad english, i'm from romania
i'd apreciate the help

 

isvflorin: You won't be able to plug your LCD display on a DVI output. That is because LCD display use LVDS (LDI) technology instead of TMDS (DVI). They are both digital but there are a lot of diferences between them. So it would be good if you would find a converter between them on the internet or try to make one yourself.

 

hi, thanks for the post,
do you have any ideea how to make work the wuxga on the amilo 1650?
is it possible to manully write the necessary info of the display into the bios of the graphics card?
or: from what I know the dell bios recognises the wuxga correctly so it should have the necessary data, but how to obtain the specific bios and how to modify the one on the fujitsu??
it would be more then great to make work the wuxga on the amilo

 

Hello ppl,
i was goin through all the posts here as i was expecting to find something to use my old Laptop LCD as a desktop monitor. I have
a Fujitsi Laptop.When i openned the the LCD(Model: NA 19017-C401)
i found it has a 20 pin connectin terminal that is connected to the
board through wires. Is there any way to find if it is DFP or DVI input?And how can i find the pinout?

Again i have an nVIDIA RIVA TNT2M64 32MB AGP card. It has 26pins(13pins in 2rows)open on board. What are these pins? Are these DVI or DFP output?
where can i find these pins configuration?
Any information about these will be appreciated.
With Thanks
Upal

 

Been interested in this topic for some time now, and just recently found this thread. After some more research I found this DIY kit.

He also 2 ebay listings, if I'm reading them correctly 1 is a kit for turning your laptop monitor into a TV and the other is for using your laptop monitor as a vga

Feedback for the ebayer appears to suggest that it works great... Has anyone tried this? Does anyone see a flaw in these auctions?
Go easy on me here if I misread these, its my 1st post.