Thread: Flip & mirroring LCD displays that do not support it

I have seen people ask about this a lot around here. Basically, people want to either flip (upside down) or mirror (reverse) their monitors to install them differently than they were designed to be installed. In the case of flipping it, usually those brave enough to do it, end up trying to rewire and extend the cable going from the LCD to the circuit board. This isn't usually necessary, though.

I have been working with quite a few LCD monitors (for other projects) lately and have found that there are not really a lot of different LCD controller ICs out there and so far, every one I have come across has the flip/mirror feature built in. The problem is that usually the screen manufacturer hard wires the particular mode. Usually it is just a set of resistors either installed or open, to set the orientation. Obviously, switches could be installed to allow you to control this whenever you want, or you can just remove or install resistors to change it permanently.

I am not sure how to do a faq for this, exactly, but I am willing to help with this if I can. The problem is that there are a ton of LCDs screens out there with different circuit boards and it is impossible to be specific about what parts to change. This is usually pretty easy to figure out though.

If anyone that needs to do this knows the part number of their LCD controller IC (and I have access to the datasheet for it), I can help them figure out which resistors to pull out to put the screen in the correct mode.

You will need to be handy with a multimeter and know how to remove and install tiny resistors. If we post them in this thread, perhaps that will give a list of models and their modifications to help others. Whenever a modification is done, people with the same LCD controller IC can use that info to figure out how to do theirs.

I will subscribe to this thread and watch for people requesting help. Post directly to this thread for help. Before writing, give your screen model # and you will also need to open it to figure out which controller IC you have. I can help with that a little if you provide a picture or are willing to type out all the chips you see on the LCD board. There are typically two main ICs in an LCD screen. One is a decoder IC, which takes the video and converts it to the proper RGB signal. The second is the LCD controller. This is the one that you will modify.

If I can be of help, let me know.

Scott McDonnell

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Heres an example from a screen I was just working with recently:

The controller used is an 8digit Technology 8D02D/E.

Mirror is on pin 25, and flip is on pin 43. These inputs are internally pulled up, and on the circuit board, there are 100 ohm resistors installed pulling these pins to ground. To flip or mirror it, I would only need to remove these resistors.