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I have gotten ahold of a LCD screen out of an old HP omnibook 5000 laptop. I know there is a way to convert this thing to fit standard VGA and I WILL get it to work so help me god! It is active matrix at 800X600 which would look sweet kickin some funky beats while running my GPS! =) I'm looking for any data I can on this and it looks like its not gonna be easy...if you can help at all it would be helpful.
It is possible to do what you want, but it'll cost you about $300 for the card to interface the LCD with the computer...
I suggest you just buy another LCD..
Not necessarily. By most accounts, all a laptop screen takes is some creative soldering. It seems that the only real electrical difference between most LCDs and VGA is the fact that VGA monitors take analogue input and LCDs take digital. The LCD controllers you mentioned are used for a lot of LCD applications, but Laptop input is still VGA, and spending $300 is kind of foolish. I'm not the expert on this, but a lot of other people are around who, I would guess, can tell you how to do it for the price of $10 plus an A/D converter.
Ummm, the A/D converter is the card he is talking about. Most places sell them for about $200. VGA is analogue, and laptop screens are digital, therefore a laptop screen cannot be VGA (because then it would be both analogue and digital at the same time :P)
If you know how to solder, but spend $200 on a simple A/D converter, then you need to think back and remember why you learned how to solder. And I'm quite sure that if you were to compare to pinout of a laptop screen with a VGA connector, you'd find all of the same signals -- the only difference is whether or not the signal is analogue or digital, and just because a VGA video card converts its signal to analogue right before it sends it out to the connector does not mean that VGA in itself is analog. VGA is most certainly digital in nature -- can you imagine a video card that's entirely analogue? Egad.
So Ill thatI would need is the pinout of a LCD screen and the pinout of a VGA connector right? Wow , thats simple. Hmm, maybe I wont get the 6" eio screen after all. Do I need to make any circuits between the VGA pinouts and the LCD pinouts?
thanks
Josh
I realize that the VGA signal is digital and then converted to analogue, the problem is that on the DB-15 connector there is one pin each for RGB. On a digital FPD however, there are 6 pins each for RGB. You can't just connect them.
Please note that I am speaking generally about FPD's, there isn't any hard standard for them like there is for regular CRT's. Some FPD's may have different connectors. The rule of thumb is this: if you have an 18-bit FPD there will be 18 connectors for display data (6 for each of the colours), if you have a 12-bit FPD there will be 12 connectors (4-each for RGB), etc. there will also be other connectors for H-sync, V-syn, etc.
Muel is right.. you certainly can't do it for 10 like JupiterX suggested.. the only thing he said that was at all usefull was "I'm no expert at this".. he obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.. I have looked around, and I can tell you that you will be spending at least $200 (go have a look at www.sageinc.com) and then you have to solder.. it is not something for someone that doesn't know what they're doing.. you are much better off just buying either a small LCD with NTSC or PAL input, or buying a flatscreen TFT..
Oh, the maturity in this bunch. One could wonder why I bother to answer 15 of these things a day..