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Using Old Laptops as Pass-Thru Displays?
Wirenut asks: "After another WinDOZE based round of laptop upgrades, I've got a pile of Toshiba (among other) laptops with
beautiful displays and crappy processors. Anybody know a techie-way of making these work as flat-panels for regular PC's? I could save a lot
of room om my tech bench. PS> I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron, so let me have it. " Interesting thought. Could something like
this really work?
Try opening up the laptop and have a look at where the display connects to the motherboard. It will probably be some kind of ribbon connector.
Have a look and see if it is labelled in any way. If you're lucky, it will have each connector labelled with what it carries. Then, pick up a VGA connector--perhaps by getting an extension cable and beheading it.
Finally, make the connections. The pinouts for a VGA connector can be found at: http:/ /www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/1236/pincon vid_vga_vesa_ddc.htm
If the LCD connector doesn't have pinout listings, see if there is a number on it anywhere. Do a web search for that and see if anyone else has figured it out.
A xxx-DOS port of VNC _Has_ to exist somewhere, I mean, geez, I run a VNC Viewer off my Palm III!
Try browsing through their "ports" page, everything form WinCE to PalmOS to Amiga to Mac to every Unix-ish system you can think of. I know there is a SVGA port that works, and, for that matter, all the other ports seem to work as well.
Getting back to the Question at hand, as I recently helped someone out with a similar situation:
First, pop open the display panel. If you're doing what I think you're doing, you won't need to worry much about the main unit.
Next, after Zapping yourself with the high voltage PS from the backlight, ensure that all power cords and batteries are disconnected from the unit.
Now, unscrew or pop a couple of clips to free the actual panel itself from it's mount in the panel housing. This (surprise, surprise) is the part you are most interested in. Find the manufacturer's name, and the part number on the back, and, you should be able to source an appropriate controller from that.
Umm, and this is how far we've gotten so far. I have to ask James if Samsung got back to him this week yet. If not, I'm going to spend some time surfing for specs after my honeymoon with my wife. (umm, unless of course that priviledge is taken away from me tee hee!)
Items of note:
- That nice, bundled cable which connects the panel to the system contains (in many cases) _both_ display _and_ power lines.
- Another thought we had was, instead of finding a single Card that would drive the display directly, we find the appropriate panel controller that accepts a 20Pin digital interface, then hook it up (via the 20 pin interface) to something like, ummmm, let's say, a Millennium 400 Max with LCD interface and... (smack)
(Boy do I want one of those, but that is another thread all of it's own.)
- You may be lucky and find out that the panel you are fondling allready is compatible with yonder 20 pin interface. Grab a connector, slap it on, cook up a PS for the panel, and away you go.
FWIW: VNC Stands for Virtual Network Computing. The project was originally started as an operating environment for "Very Thin Clients", or, in other words, systems with _minimal_ capability. I think their first device was a wireless web tablet. The device itself was slow, but that didn't matter, because it was only being used as a graphical dumb terminal of sorts.
FWIW2: VNC is based on XFree86, Check out the code, it's a pretty neat hack.
Post a reply if you want me to e-mail you with any headway we make.
YMMV, Enjoy.
John Gunkel, (AKA Yanic, without cookie)
Mad Scientist
(come on baybe! moderate this puppy up!)
Using old 486 laptops as xterms works *very* well with an ethernet card. Just export the displays you wish and your main box will appear to have many heads. Just ifconfig the ip, export the display, and set xhosts on the remote to allow the access. It takes a few minutes and the results are low powered heads displaying lots of additional screen realestate.