convert laptop into an lcd monitor?
ken
Does anybody know how to convert a laptop into an lcd monitor so that I
can plug a different computer into it and have that computer's video
output display on the laptop lcd? Is that even possible?
Thanks!
Ken
Conor
can go and buy a LCD monitor cheaper.
--
Conor
-You wanted an argument? Oh I'm sorry, but this is abuse. You want room
K5, just along the corridor. Stupid git. (Monty Python)
kony
wrote:
No, it's not _reasonably_ possible. A Google search
would've revealed this.
Tal Fuchs
an LCD screen ?
I have an old Compaq Armada that I want to use it's screen
"Conor" <conor....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1d362c594...@news.individual.net...
David Maynard
> Isn't it possible to take the LCD screen from the laptop and connect it as
> an LCD screen ?
> I have an old Compaq Armada that I want to use it's screen
If you know how LCD screens are driven, and what kind of LCD screen you
have, then you can connect to it "as an LCD screen."
What is isn't is an LCD monitor.
David Maynard
No. The 'screen' in a notebook is not a monitor. It's a bare LCD driven
directly by the notebook electronics.
>
> Thanks!
> Ken
Conor
> Isn't it possible to take the LCD screen from the laptop and connect it as
> an LCD screen ?
> I have an old Compaq Armada that I want to use it's screen
>
aleX
If the laptop is functioning can he use the whole laptop as a 'screen',
or is there no vga/dvi-in on most laptops? Alternatively, could he use
some sort of remote access software to display the PC on the laptop
screen? Maybe running 2 machines defeats his purpose though. Just curious.
kony
<al...@no-email-address.com> wrote:
>David Maynard wrote:
>
>>> Hello,
>>> Does anybody know how to convert a laptop into an lcd monitor so that
>>> I can plug a different computer into it and have that computer's video
>>> output display on the laptop lcd? Is that even possible?
>>
>>
>> No. The 'screen' in a notebook is not a monitor. It's a bare LCD driven
>> directly by the notebook electronics.
>
>If the laptop is functioning can he use the whole laptop as a 'screen',
no
>or is there no vga/dvi-in on most laptops?
no
> Alternatively, could he use
>some sort of remote access software to display the PC on the laptop
>screen?
no, again not practical. You'd run whole notebook for the
OS and have bad screen lag. It might seem barely tolerable
for a moment but not good enough for any regular use. If you
needed faster processing for something, you'd want to run
the laptop yourself and remotely access that OTHER system
instead of the other way around.
To put it comprehensively:
Reuse laptop screen? NO.
aleX
Thanks, I appreciate your advice. I was using a laptop with a CRT
monitor as a bigger screen (ie the other way round from what the OP
wanted), but as has been said a CRT is a 'monitor proper' whilst a
laptop screen is just a laptop screen. Your info is useful for me so I
know what works/doesn't work in the future.
David Maynard
> David Maynard wrote:
>
>>> Hello,
>>> Does anybody know how to convert a laptop into an lcd monitor so that
>>> I can plug a different computer into it and have that computer's
>>> video output display on the laptop lcd? Is that even possible?
>>
>>
>>
>> No. The 'screen' in a notebook is not a monitor. It's a bare LCD
>> driven directly by the notebook electronics.
>
>
> If the laptop is functioning can he use the whole laptop as a 'screen',
No, he can use it as a laptop.
> or is there no vga/dvi-in on most laptops? Alternatively, could he use
> some sort of remote access software to display the PC on the laptop
> screen?
Sure. You can run remote access software on any PC and that includes
'small' ones, like a laptop.
Tal Fuchs
Thanks for the info.
Can you explain what should be done to be able to use it's screen ? After
all it is a screen, isn't it ?
Some electronic is no problem for me.
Thanks,
"kony" <sp...@spam.com> wrote in message
news:4edrc15s4f844vaka...@4ax.com...
-john
I'm sorry so many people are apparently ragging on your idea; it's not
that it _can't_ be done it's just not easy to do, or done as far as
I've seen. If you really really wanted to, and had the technical
expertise, you could create a driver board with a raw lcd driver ic,
connector, power supply, etc with [sx]vga input. However the
practicality of this contraption might be limited, and you would likely
spend a lot of time, as well as money designing and building a circuit
to do it.
I have however heard of a few designs for the hardware floating around,
most use specialized ICs that are difficult to get your hands on, even
if you can get the schematic. http://store.earthlcd.com might have
some pre-built ones that might work for you, though it wouldn't
guarantee it, they mostly carry controllers for smaller lcd panels,
give them a look if you're interested, let us know if you find
something that works.
In case you didn't already know, don't let others discourage you,
everything is doable (well almost), just how much effort you want to
put into it.
-john
Tal Fuchs
Is there any way to use the laptop MB as the controller ?
"-john" <jhas...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1120809516.0...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Wing Wong
> Kony,
> Thanks for the info.
>
> Can you explain what should be done to be able to use it's screen ? After
> all it is a screen, isn't it ?
> Some electronic is no problem for me.
>
> Thanks,
>
I'm not Kony but, I have a few suggestions. You will first need to find
out the signals being supplied to the screen. Most LCD have some sort of
Row-Column type driving circuitry. These displays usually have a frame
marker line, a line marker line and a pixel clock in. Other signals it may
have includes a signal invert line. It could also have up to 4 or maybe
even more DC biasing signals for the row-column driver. The rest of the
lines will consist of VCC for for the logic and perhaps a separate supply
for the LCD the rest will be digital data lines. Finding which signal si
which would not be too hard if you had acess to a logic analyser, but it
would be nigh on impossible without one( unless you find a data sheet of
the LCD). After that it all a matter of driving the screen with the right
signals.
Thats all I can think of for now. If I come up with anything else I'll
post more.
--
Wing Wong.
kony
<fuc...@bezeqint.net> wrote:
>Kony,
>Thanks for the info.
>
>Can you explain what should be done to be able to use it's screen ?
No, Google it.
>After
>all it is a screen, isn't it ?
Exactly. It's JUST a screen, remotely like taking a CRT
tube out of an old monitor then wanting to direct wire it to
a video card output.
>Some electronic is no problem for me.
Even if you were the designer of the circuit & board for the
particular laptop screen, it would still not be worthwhile.
kony
wrote:
Be discouraged.
After dozens if not hundreds of hours and hundreds if not
thousands of dollars, you might have a crude prototype that
is junk compared to a $200 desktop screen bought whole.
David Maynard
> Ken,
>
> I'm sorry so many people are apparently ragging on your idea;
For good reason.
He didn't ask if he could rip parts out of a notebook and then reuse them
in making a monitor of his own design. He asked "how to convert a laptop
into an lcd monitor" and a laptop isn't a monitor nor is it 'convertible'
to one.
USA_Guy _
your laptop has a USB port..... you might be able to do this by using a
USB Video Capture Device such as the Belkin "VideoBus-2"
-
However.... LCD screens are so cheap today, I don't think it pays to
spend any money experimenting around with such a scheme.
-
Go to Newegg and browse around.
Some 17 inch flat screens are as low as $200 (including shipping)
-
A top brand like a Samsung 17 is under $250.
-
~ Guy ~
-
David Maynard
> Just guessing at this.... but If your computer has TV output.... and
> your laptop has a USB port..... you might be able to do this by using a
> USB Video Capture Device such as the Belkin "VideoBus-2"
Ever seen a computer display on a TV?
USA_Guy _
===================
Ever seen a computer display on a TV?
-
Guy Replied
============
Yes..... it's unbelievably bad.
-
However..... we are talking about displaying the output on an LCD
screen, not a TV screen.
-
And don't forget..... I DID say I was just guessing :-)
-
~ Guy ~
ken
practical. I was mostly wondering if it was a simple electrical
conversion, which apparently it is not, or if there was some sort of USB
or other device that could be plugged into a laptop which would then
receive the video input from another computer through a regular video
cable and through software display that input on the screen.
Ultimately I would want to be running a Xinerama display across the two
screens so using remote console software like VNC would not work.
Of course as people have suggested it would be much easier and cheaper
to just by an LCD monitor. But what bugs me is that LCD Monitors don't
get resolutions of 1600x1200 until they are at least 20" screens. Both
my laptops (inspiron 8200, and inspiron 8000) have 15" LCDs with that
resolution. In a xinerama configuraion it's nice if the two screens are
roughly the same size. So why is it that for a long time laptops have
been able to drive high resolution 15" LCDs but you still can't get that
with an LCD monitor? Surely I'm not the only one that would value that?
Thanks for all the posts.
Ken
David Maynard
> David Maynard Wrote
> ===================
> Ever seen a computer display on a TV?
> -
> -
> Guy Replied
> ============
> Yes..... it's unbelievably bad.
> -
> However..... we are talking about displaying the output on an LCD
> screen, not a TV screen.
It's still going to be incredibly bad because NTSC video wasn't designed to
carry more than a TV can display, for the obvious reason that's where it's
expected to end up, so one might as well send it to a TV because that's
about all the bandwidth that'll be left after it gets crammed onto the 'TV
output' port.
Then it'll be further degraded by the LCD screen because, after being
scrambled into an NTSC signal, the odds the LCD pixels will neatly line up
with the distorted video is virtually nil.
> -
> And don't forget..... I DID say I was just guessing :-)
I know. But this one is a good example of the devil being in the details.
TV is fascinating from the standpoint it's so ubiquitous that people tend
to 'trust' it (seeing is believing, right?) even though it is incredibly
lousy, from a specification standpoint, and depends upon a bevy of tricks
to the eye for it's appearance.
Here's another little known example even though everyone 'saw it for
themselves'. The Patriot Anti-Missile system (except it wasn't designed to
be one. It was designed to intercept aircraft) made it's debut during Gulf
War 1 and there was a big controversy about it's effectiveness with the
military saying it was doing well and the critics claiming it 'missed' just
about every one.
But, besides the fact it wasn't designed to 'hit' the target, depending on
shrapnel from itself exploding near the target to do the damage, what
people 'saw' was not what really happened because they 'saw' it on TV.
People would show TV footage over and over showing the warhead exploded
'late', after the SCUD/Patriot intercept point, but TV is 60 fields per
second, 30 full frames per second, and the two objects were closing on each
other at over 3,000-3500 meters per second. That means that from one 60Hz
frame to the next the two moved over 50-70 meters relative to each other,
or over half a football field (and this doesn't even take into account
visual distortions from the camera angles).
Now, you obviously can't 'capture' in a TV frame an explosion that hasn't
happened yet so you see 'nothing' and then, on the next frame, if there's
'light' from the explosion that means it could be as much as half a
football field 'past' the SCUD, even if it was a direct hit, because your
60 frame a second TV set MISSED the moment of explosion. In fact, it would
be the wildest stroke of luck if one of the 60Hz fields just happened to
scan at that precise point in time.
So it's no surprise it 'looks like' the Patriot 'often' explodes well after
the SCUD goes by. It must, by the very nature of the lousy TV set you're
'seeing it for yourself' on.
(Btw, the closing speed also caused some problems for the Patriot because,
as I mentioned, it was designed for intercepting aircraft and even when
they did the quick 'on the spot' upgrade to try for missiles it was tuned
for 2100 meters per second because that matched the type of russian
missiles they had experimented with. But Saddam had modified his SCUDs and
they were moving faster than anticipated)
> -
> ~ Guy ~
>
4over4
PCI LCD controller:
http://store.earthlcd.com/s.nl/sc.7/category.108/.f
I was looking for the same so a can stick an old Dell Latitude LCD to
my PC case
No I am not mad, it a PC for streaming radio shows from gigs, so
easier to carry :)
kony
Buying a multi-hundred-dollar controller card so you can rip
a bare (frameless), old/dimmed, low-response LCD out to
reuse it when the end result is that it's more time and cost
to implement than a brand new LCD MEANT for the purpose?
You're mad.
sillydipstixs18
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=51040
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=43743
LCD Controllers:
http://www.aurora.se/controllers.htm
"Google it! it's not possible!" Bull@#$@ !
kony
bmxra...@cfl.rr-dot-com.no-spam.invalid (sillydipstixs18)
wrote:
Most people have not claimed it was impossible.
Rather, it's a poor choice, for several reasons that have
been gone over and over time and time again. I might even
suggest someone has to be an idiot to use one with all the
better alternatives out there.
kony
wrote:
In retrospect, "idiot" might be a little harsh, they should
be given some considration for being able to do it, but it
is still a very poor choice unless the only parameter is
lowest cost due to reuse of parts or if they're stuck on a
deserted island, similar lack of access to all the better
alternatives.
David Maynard
> On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:34:06 GMT,
> bmxra...@cfl.rr-dot-com.no-spam.invalid (sillydipstixs18)
> wrote:
>
>
>>It can be done.....and there are pictures to prove it!
>>
>>http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=51040
>>
>>http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=43743
>>
>>LCD Controllers:
>>http://www.aurora.se/controllers.htm
>>
>>
>>"Google it! it's not possible!" Bull@#$@ !
>
>
> Most people have not claimed it was impossible.
>
> Rather, it's a poor choice,
I'd go further and say it isn't 'converting a laptop into an LCD monitor',
it's using a component of a notebook, e.g. the screen, in building your own
LCD monitor.
Conor
sillydipstixs18 says...
> It can be done.....and there are pictures to prove it!
Of course it can be done. It just ends up looking like some shitty
hobby project whilst at the same time managing to cost at least twice
what it would to go and buy a ready made job.
> LCD Controllers:
> http://www.aurora.se/controllers.htm
>
Minumum order - 100. Scarily, there are no prices shown.
--
Conor
"You're not married, you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen
Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart, Extras.
Franc Zabkar
finger to keyboard and composed:
A popular interface used by LCD panels is LVDS. You can buy a DVI to
LVDS converter for ~US$600. This person (hobbyist?) claims to have
designed and built one ... well, almost:
http://www.fourelectronics.com/vsync-on-dvi-11566264.html
Graphics cards use TMDS in their DVI interfaces. While TMDS and LVDS
may appear superficially similar, they are not compatible.
These digital standards are explained and compared here:
http://www.national.com/nationaledge/may01/lvds.html
Here is a product spec, including pinouts, for a typical LG-Philips
LVDS panel:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~fzabkar/121lgphilipslp121x04-b2p2.pdf
Here's a Samsung panel:
http://earthlcd.com/zlcd/downloads/lt121s1105w.pdf
-- Franc Zabkar
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.