Hello,
I am currently trying a mini-itx project and have a very important question for you guys. I want to interface a laptop lcd (anyone doesn't matter) to the board so I can embedd the lcd into the case. Does anyone know how to do this? All the other aspects of the project are simple, this is just the big stumper, oh and I need it to run on linux.
Thanks in advance,
Justin

www.flat-panel.com used to sell driver boards for direct drive LCDs, I has a feeling the video performance isn't particularly hot though.

It's more than a stumper, it's almost impossible!

A few things you can try are finding a desktop LCD by the same manufacturer as the laptop LCD you want to interface, and hope that the desktop control board uses the same interface as the laptop LCD. Problems with this is, you haven't really any way of knowing if it'll work before you rip the desktop display apart.

You can also try and buy a dedicated display board and matched LCD from a company such as http://www.earthlcd.com/ - but this tends to be very expensive, and the controller board may not work in Linux.

The easiest option is to get a LCD that will accept a composite TV input, such as one designed for car use, and feed it from a graphics card with TV output. This is very easy to get working, but the quality of the picture is pretty poor.

Good luck!

It's more than a stumper, it's almost impossible!

Baloney. I've done it a couple times now. Advice:

1. Make sure you have a datasheet for the LCD WITH PINOUT before puchasing it. Without that pinout, it is useless.

2. Yes, you need an LCD controller, any ol' standard VGA card will not work. And I'm not talking DVI here either.

3. You'll need to get the correct backlight inverter (specs should be in datasheet.)

4. You'll need to make a data cable. On the LCD end, there will usually be some kind of difficult-to-find connector. Many Sharp screens use a 31-pin Hirose connector. You'll want to find one of these as soldering to those tiny pins is difficult and prone to broken connections. Then you just connect the pins on your LCD to the matching ones on your controller.

That's pretty much it....from there, just plug it all up, supply the correct power (you'll probably need a DC-DC converter for use in-vehicle) and viola! LCD goodness.

Also, when shopping for a LCD on ebay or something like that, be sure that it is a TFT screen and not DSTN or you will be extremely disappointed with the refresh rates. Also make check that it supports enough colors for your application. For example, a 12-bit LCD will not work well for watching DVDs as it only supports 4096 colors, but it works great for GPS.

My official recommendation is to buy one of the kits from earthlcd linked above. It's a lot of work and some of the parts are very difficult to source as a hobbyist, unless you can get samples. The only reason in my opinion to do it yourself is if you have a device with a built-in LCD controller and no other options.

In reply to:

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Baloney.

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That's a technical term you don't really need to bother yourself with.

Could I buy a used desktop lcd, remove it from the housing, and then connect the vga cable to the video card? Now, off to find a cheap used lcd.

This guy used an old laptop lcd on his first mp3 car.

BTW www.flat-panel.com and www.earthlcd.com are the same site....

That should work fine.

The only difference is it might not be so easy to hook it up to a DC supply as a laptop display. You'll either have to find the outputs of the transformer and feed power in there, or just run the thing off mains voltage. Neither is a particular problem, you'll just have to decide which is easiest or more desirable.

In reply to:

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Baloney. I've done it a couple times now.

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Well actually, you glossed over a number of important points. As you say, you need a datasheet, which means no buying a cheap broken laptop off ebay or similar. You also need to be confident wiring the thing up - which depends on the soldering skills of the OP.

Also, you need to source all the parts, which as you mention is not exactly simple for the occasional amateur electronics enthusiast.

Also, the OP wanted the system to work in Linux - I don't know, but I might imagine that the majority of cheap controller boards for running LCDs would not be well supported in Linux.

None of this is unsurpassable, but it is a lot of hard work, and if you don't know a fair bit about electronics, have the ability to source components, and possibly have the knowledge to write your own graphics card driver for Linux, might as well be close to impossible.

A much better solution is the one the OP suggested, which was to use a desktop LCD and remove it from the case - it can then be easily powered, uses a standard 15 pin VGA cable, and can be driven from any graphics card you like.

hi there
from an old not-working laptop i've ripped off a SAMSUNG LT104S1-102 LCD (LT104V3-10S from the back) and i've the inverter and the motherboard to (with a cirrus logic video card). to buy a 199$ lcd controller from earthlcd is the only way to revive the lcd to be used with the desktop pc ? isn't a cheaper way to use it ?