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What to do with multiple LCD's from IBM T42's?

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ViviTheMage

ViviTheMage

Lifer
I have about 1-8 LCD's that I can pull from broken, various T42's. (bad motherboard/CPU/etc), but the LCD's work fine.

What can i do with them? I am not exactly sure how to wire them up, but I am willing to play with them, even if it breaks them...not a big deal, we were going to toss them anyway.

<--- not an engineer by any means.
 
Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
I have about 1-8 LCD's that I can pull from broken, various T42's. (bad motherboard/CPU/etc), but the LCD's work fine.

What can i do with them? I am not exactly sure how to wire them up, but I am willing to play with them, even if it breaks them...not a big deal, we were going to toss them anyway.

<--- not an engineer by any means.
Click to expand...

Then using the LCDs as displays is pretty much out of the question. You'd have to know all sorts of timing/interface data to feed the LCD picture information and a way to get it in there.

You could make a light panel or something. Take off the metal bezel, take off the actual LCD and interface electronics but keep the diffuser and backlight and its module intact. Put back the bezel. You'd have to figure out the voltage for the inverter. Or use an inverter people use for CCFL case mods. I've done this with some old PowerBooks.



 
I was thinking along the lines of following in someones steps?
Since I am , by no means, an engineer outside of ripping stuff apart...it'd be easier to follow what someone else did, and learn a little along the way.
 
Or you could just sell 'em on eBay, and use the money to buy yourself a new, working laptop. You'd probably get between $30 and $50 per panel.
 
You might be able to find someone that has already made the microcontroller necessary to convert VGA/DVI to the signal that the panel requires. If that is the case then once you find a way to mount them, you will have a wicked thin, decent size and res monitor for a computer.
 
That was what I was thinking would be sweet...mount 8 of them in a 4x4 pattern..tie them together to produce one image, don't really care what..just to look cool! Maybe scroll through pictures? Whatever...

Any ideas where I could find something like that?
 
well, assuming it's lvds, and assuming you can figure out the pinout (don't count on it), you can get some small computers with LVDS out, or get dvi/vga->lvds adaptors for >$100. [http://www.dpieshop.com/kontro...jum6hbi5n7vcbjisvv87o2]

Maybe you can nab something similar out of a [broken] desktop lcd, but I'm not sure, never looked into it.

But you've still got the problem of the pinout for the lcd monitor, unless it's something standardized, or you know someone at IBM that is cool with (presumably) breaking the nda.

 
Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
That was what I was thinking would be sweet...mount 8 of them in a 4x4 pattern..tie them together to produce one image, don't really care what..just to look cool! Maybe scroll through pictures? Whatever...

Any ideas where I could find something like that?
Click to expand...

I'd also be interested in something that allows me to mount 8 items in a 4x4 pattern!
 
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