pin-outs on a laptops ribben cable for LCD?

[43st]

I have an older Dell laptop that needs more work than it's worth to me. I've had the thing totally apart on several occasions. I was wondering what the pin-outs for the LCD ribbon cable are? I'd love to hook a DB15 up to this puppy and use it. Also any thoughts on a power supply would be welcome also, though I consider that the easy part.

 

[Gosharkss]

Most laptops use true parallel digital connections, one wire for each bit out of video memory. Laptops have the advantage of using flexible circuit boards or short ribbon cables to connect to the LCD panel.

Assuming you can find the pinouts, you would then need to build a digital to analog converter in order to use a laptop to drive an analog monitor.

 

[43st]

Thanks...

I have plenty of DA's at work, so no problem there. Also, I may not of stated this right. I was thinking of going the other direction. I wanted to use the LCD on a regular machine. I'll do more research. (I think I may have put this in the wrong topic anyway.) I'll report back with my findings.

 

[CTho9305]

<< Thanks...

I have plenty of DA's at work, so no problem there. Also, I may not of stated this right. I was thinking of going the other direction. I wanted to use the LCD on a regular machine. I'll do more research. (I think I may have put this in the wrong topic anyway.) I'll report back with my findings. >>



I hope you get it working... some old laptops do have awesome screens (even if they're thick, for a desktop, who cares )

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I wanted to put a lappy's display in my semi-portable system, but couldn't find any specs at all. Good luck getting enough info on the display.

 

[Menelaos]

Demon-Xanth is right, the problems isn't as easy as it sounds. There iso real standard for LCD connections in laptops. Each vendor/manufacturer uses its own pinout, so if your lucky you might find the pinout at dell or maybe on the net if somebody figured it out fot you. If not you can always use the old "trial & error" technique, but it 'll probably take a lot of trials .

Good luck,

menel.

 

[Supradude]

good luck on your search ~! and post links if you find good info, i spent 3 months searching for similar information a year ago when i wanted to incorporate a Powerbook G3 LCD into my suitcase lan rig... =( searched and found the only way to do it without making your own darn controller card is to spend ~$300+ for the converter cards and cables and such... just wasn't worth it to me... too much babble =P GOOD LUCK

 

[Shalmanese]

This has been brought up countless times both here and elsewhere. AFAIK, there is no easy way to do it at all so dont bother.

 

[zephyrprime]

I've seen agp and pci cards for computers that allow you to hook up a LCD screen to a computer. But they cost so much that it would be cheaper to buy a LCD monitor!

I've posted a thread on the general forum concerning the same topic. I'd like to ask you, does your LCD have a 20pin connector?

 

[flood]

check the hard forums, there is a pretty extensive faq there about lcds
I've seen some people use a video card designed to interface with lcd's, it wasnt cheap, but it was simple and it worked,

 

[Peter]

Forget it.

This is completely unlike those generic VGA flat panel things that act and work like CRTs, signal wise. You need to feed the signal digitally, with the panel's own native timing.

The LCD connection is either a parallel digital signal (with 4 to 8 data lines each for red, green and blue channels), or this digital signal muxed onto a high speed serial on the mainboard side and demuxed in the panel (TMDS, LVDS standards).

What this all means is you need to have two things: a graphics device capable of producing that kind of signal, and its VGA BIOS adapted to produce the exact timing that this particular panel requires.

I know how it's being done - but you need lots of stuff you won't ever get as an end user ... the technical detail specification of the panel used, a graphics solution designed to produce the right kind of signal (will say, a specifically designed graphics card or on-mainboard graphics solution), and the OEMization toolkit from the graphics chip manufacturer to adjust the VGA BIOS to the panel's requirements. Everyday work for BIOS engineers like me, practically impossible for anybody else.

regards, Peter