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T.U.B. · 10-06-2005, 04:32 PM

Hey nice! You just summed up what is keeping me busy for the last 6 months:
- I have made an projector out of an overhead and a 15inch TFT.
- I 've looked into and abandonned the idea of hooking op a laptop LCD to my pc.

First the laptop LCD to pc. It is indeed possible. But for someone with a master degree in electronics I suppose.
There are no ready to use convertors that you just can plug between the LCD and the pc, just because there is absolutely no standard in these things. Every brand has there own controllers, each with there own interface. Which are all, of course, are kept as a business secret. General way to get this to work is:
- Find as much info and specs of the LCD as possible.
- Make sure the controller is still attached to the LCD
- try to find out the pin lay-out of the controller. (if you are extremely lucky you can find it in the specs). I've heard guy's that completely reverse engineered the controller.
- You should end up with seperated inputpins for red, green and blue. There could be more then one (i.e. 3 or 4) pins for the same color.
- warm up your soldering station
- get an old pci VGA graphics card. Make sure there is a VESA Feature connector on this card.
- solder the pins of your controller to what you think is the corresponding VESA Feature controller ( http://pinouts.ru/data/VesaFeature_pinout.shtml ) . You need at least pins 1,2,3,5,6,7,9,11,12 and probably some 'display on' signal.
- This would give you at best a whopping 4-bit (16 colors) LCD.

This is not really worth the effort I think... (and this solution is completely useless as LCD for a home-made beamer)

Second part: the overhead.
I've had one for 3 weeks until someone tripped mid-movie over the powercord. TFT broken

2 tips:
- as refference: a 250 Watt overhead needs a completely darkened room to have a acceptable contrast, a 400 Watt overhead can give barely enough contrast with the shades closed. Do not forget there is a lot of difference between the contrast trough a slide and through a TFT. A TFT has 2 polarisation filters the light has to pass through.
- have some casefans blow over and under the TFT. (the TFT should be a few centimeter above the glass of the overhead ). This wil safe the crispness of the colours of the TFT in the long term, because TFT's can't stand heat. Wire the fans to 8V or so, so they don't make that much noise.

I've got really a lot of info on the laptop LCD to pc toppic. Downside is: it's in Dutch... Here is the link: http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/...sages/799377/0
The first page has some pictures of the conversion in progress.

at last: Here is nice idea i've seen what you can do with old laptops: Make them into electronical picture frames! Take of the screen and turn it around (like a tablet pc) so you are seeing only the screen. Put a nice border around the screen so it looks like a pictureframe. Load up a slideshow or animation. Use your imagination! Put in a wireless dongle and control them remote,....
Here is a link with lot of pictures of electronical picture frames. Very cool indeed! Link is again in Dutch, but lot's of pictures to keep you amused...
http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/...ssages/1020344

10-06-2005, 04:32 PM	#2 (permalink)
T.U.B. Crazy Location: Belgium	Hey nice! You just summed up what is keeping me busy for the last 6 months: - I have made an projector out of an overhead and a 15inch TFT. - I 've looked into and abandonned the idea of hooking op a laptop LCD to my pc. First the laptop LCD to pc. It is indeed possible. But for someone with a master degree in electronics I suppose. There are no ready to use convertors that you just can plug between the LCD and the pc, just because there is absolutely no standard in these things. Every brand has there own controllers, each with there own interface. Which are all, of course, are kept as a business secret. General way to get this to work is: - Find as much info and specs of the LCD as possible. - Make sure the controller is still attached to the LCD - try to find out the pin lay-out of the controller. (if you are extremely lucky you can find it in the specs). I've heard guy's that completely reverse engineered the controller. - You should end up with seperated inputpins for red, green and blue. There could be more then one (i.e. 3 or 4) pins for the same color. - warm up your soldering station - get an old pci VGA graphics card. Make sure there is a VESA Feature connector on this card. - solder the pins of your controller to what you think is the corresponding VESA Feature controller ( http://pinouts.ru/data/VesaFeature_pinout.shtml ) . You need at least pins 1,2,3,5,6,7,9,11,12 and probably some 'display on' signal. - This would give you at best a whopping 4-bit (16 colors) LCD. This is not really worth the effort I think... (and this solution is completely useless as LCD for a home-made beamer) Second part: the overhead. I've had one for 3 weeks until someone tripped mid-movie over the powercord. TFT broken 2 tips: - as refference: a 250 Watt overhead needs a completely darkened room to have a acceptable contrast, a 400 Watt overhead can give barely enough contrast with the shades closed. Do not forget there is a lot of difference between the contrast trough a slide and through a TFT. A TFT has 2 polarisation filters the light has to pass through. - have some casefans blow over and under the TFT. (the TFT should be a few centimeter above the glass of the overhead ). This wil safe the crispness of the colours of the TFT in the long term, because TFT's can't stand heat. Wire the fans to 8V or so, so they don't make that much noise. I've got really a lot of info on the laptop LCD to pc toppic. Downside is: it's in Dutch... Here is the link: http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/...sages/799377/0 The first page has some pictures of the conversion in progress. at last: Here is nice idea i've seen what you can do with old laptops: Make them into electronical picture frames! Take of the screen and turn it around (like a tablet pc) so you are seeing only the screen. Put a nice border around the screen so it looks like a pictureframe. Load up a slideshow or animation. Use your imagination! Put in a wireless dongle and control them remote,.... Here is a link with lot of pictures of electronical picture frames. Very cool indeed! Link is again in Dutch, but lot's of pictures to keep you amused... http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/...ssages/1020344 __________________ Amerika by Franz Kafka “As Karl Rossman, a poor boy of sixteen who had been packed off to America by his parents because a servant girl had seduced him and got herself a child by him, stood on the liner slowly entering the harbour of New York, a sudden burst of sunshine seemed to illumine the Statue of Liberty, so that he saw it in a new light, although he had sighted it long before. The arm with the sword rose up as if newly stretched aloft, and round the figure blew the free winds of heaven.”