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LCD Monitors with Dead Pixels/Columns for Sale?
The Other White Meat asks: "I want to put a computer in my kitchen. For space reasons, I want to make it an LCD; a 15" screen would be perfect. This monitor is going to be exposed to harsh conditions (flying food, jumping cats, general mishandling). I don't want to spend so much money on it that if I came home and found it broken that I would be upset by it. I figured there must be plenty of places that will sell LCDs with dead pixels or columns, where I might be able to pick one up in the $50-100 range, but so far I have found nothing. Surely there must be a market for 'Grade B' LCD monitors, for precisely this sort of low life expectancy sort of usage? So fellow readers, can you succeed where Google® has failed, and lead me to the cheapo LCDs?"
Why not contact the manufacturers themselves, and asking for some of their 'grade-b' stuff? I'm sure they'll be happy to either tell you to buzz off, or send you oodles of broken monitors for little more than shipping.
You also might want to look for places that repair them, and other monitors of that nature. Computer shops, in other words.
Another place might be your local neighborhood TV repair shop. But this might be stretching it a bit, because I've found that most of the shops these days are filled with idiots that wouldn't know the right end of a monitor to look at, let alone fix the innards of it.
And if that all fails, then goto the junkyard and look in the newer SUV's and Van's for the LCD screens that come in some of them... and hope that the grizzled old guy behind the counter doesn't realize that is worth 500 bucks... And doesn't want you to pay with ass-dollars...
I suspect, but don't know, that it costs more to make an LCD, put it in a suitable enclosure with a controller card, box it and ship it than your $50 price mark, regardless of the number of bad pixels.
Since the LCD is the only bad part then it's cheaper to find that it doesn't meet specs right off the line before ever attaching any circuitry. The only thing lost at that point is the time to manufacture, and some small amount of materials.
Lastly, most of the big display manufacturers probably have the high-volume LCD lines to the point where units thrown away due to minor defect (but still usable, as in your need) are very low, much less than 10%, probably under 5% or even 1%.
The reason we have specs which include "no dead pixels inside center area, up to eight outside" are not because someone sat down and decided that was the case, or because it was determined that after 8 pixels around the border people started having siezures. It was most likely determined by a bean counter looking at the numbers, and determining that the 95% success rate would include screens which may have up to that many defects in those areas.
Now that they have a starting point, they've refined the process not to reduce dead pixels, but to reduce dead pixels that fall outside those requirements.
I imagine that you can special order LCDs from a major manufacturer in quantity and lower your cost by lowering the requirements, but I doubt it could be profitable for more than a year or two until LCDs finally cost around $100 for the 15" versions.
-Adam
here's an interesting one:
cheap princeton lcd
where I found it
A little above the price range, but a good deal.
Too bad this won't work. The LCDs on laptops usually use a proprietary digital input. I've looked into this several times, and every site I've seen has said the same thing "don't bother, it doesn't work".
I suggest you check out http://www.eio.com/
They sell alot of close-out and discontinued LCD products. It looks like most of the ones they sell are meant for TV signals and not RPG computer signals, but if you can get TV Out it might be worth your while.
For example, on their front page they have a Gateway 2000 Solo LCD 12.1" TFT display. It looks like it was meant to go into a laptop, but if you can get a controller for it, it should take an RGB signal as well.
They have parts but not complete units. There is, however, a fifteen-dollar replacement (new!) LCD screen listed which might do the trick.
If you are planning on using it for recipies and similar "text only" needs, find an old 486 laptop, extend the LCD cable, and mount the LCD underneath the countertop. Cut a hole out for the LCD in the counter, and mount the LCD. Use a router to make a countersink edge for a piece of glass or lexan, set flush with the countertop, and sealed in place with clear aquarium silicone sealant (to keep liquids out). Extend the keyboard to a pullout location (a custom "cutting board" style "drawer" would be perfect). On the laptop, run some simple serial terminal software or lynx, and serve up text only via serial comms or a network card (if you have a pc card/pcmcia slot on the old laptop).
If you are looking for old LCDs, try to find the closest used computer recycling shop around your area. Look in the largest city near you. You want a place that is typically located in the "dregs" of the city - the industrial quarters, crack alley - if the city is a coastal city, like LA or San Diego, look into the dock/shipyard areas, too. There are plenty of places like this, many of them selling equipment and junk for fractions of a penny on the dollar. Some of them want to get rid of stuff so bad they will GIVE it to you! I know of three really great places like this here in the Phoenix, AZ area. Larger cities will probably have more to choose from.
These places will generally be scummy - you will get dirty standing still and touching nothing. But this is a *good* thing, because it means you have found a gold mine. Now, you just need to sort through the junk (it is rarely organized well, and even if it is organized, it still needs to be sifted through). Sometimes, you will find a rare gem.
Pertinant to your question, at one of the places I know of, they had got in a huge cache of SONY LCD monitors. The only problem was that most of them had the logic boards removed. However, I managed to find two that should mate together, once I get around to messing with them. Might be a total bust, though. Anyhow, for $25.00 I got two monitors, one with a busted screen, but the full logic intact, the other with a non-cracked screen, but no logic - mix and match until it works.
The other thing to consider is dumpster diving - you would be surprised at the amount of shit companies throw away. My job not too long ago threw out a Compaq P150 laptop with CD-ROM and sound. Took it home, powered it up, no screen. Turned out it was a busted backlight - one trip to Fry's Electronics and some soldering got the beast working perfectly. Picked up a cheap SODIMM to get the RAM up to max, dropped in a cheap Ebay laptop drive to bust that up - everything else is a-ok. Currently in the process of setting up Debian on it.
From trash to treasure - if my company did it, ALL COMPANIES DO IT. You just have to find where and when they do it, and be willing to ask them about their castoffs and junk, or dive in the dumpster. You may or may not find a usable LCD display this way, but I guarantee you will find usable "junk"...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon