Frank Grayson

I ordered one of these Monochrome LCD displays about a week ago and it is now happily working in the car =) i like it a lot and everyone who's seen it like it too.

these are fairly cheap $90 then add shipping and handling. It's also a lot more readable than the Sharp 6" TFT that is going around a lot but that's just because it actually has the right 640x480 resolution and it's a lot larger. In sunlight i'd say the Sharp 6" TFT will do a lot better for brightness. This monochrome LCD kit is a lot easier to use though since you just put a 16 bit ISA card into your PC and you don't have to build a special power invertor or anything for the backlight or add attachments for the video signal like you do for the Sharp 6" TFT. $90 plus shipping and handling (tax also for Californians) gets you everything you need to use it.

they are pulls from industrial wall/panel PC's. It's a Sharp LM64P839 if anyone is interested. It comes with a 16 bit ISA LCD controller card (and the connecting cable for screen and backlight) which provides all the power needed for the LCD and its backlight (so no extra power supply needed besides computer power supply to motherboard) it has a 9.6" diagonal viewable and is a passive matrix screen. The board works normally under DOS/Win3x, Win95/98 (have not tested NT but should work as standard VGA) and Linux even. It's very easily readable as far as text and windows at 640x480 is concerned. I run MPXplay on my car machine and the screen works great. Booting into win98 is no problem either and i can clearly see and read everything (although in 16 shades of grey heh heh) at 640x480 don't expect to do a lot of work though heh heh. (i've even played a few games on it, it's not a laptop but it does a fair impression of a briefcase computer, especially with the $10 keyboard i found that's like 5"x8")

However in direct sunlight it's hard to read of course unless you're like 3 feet away and right in front of it or it's in the shade (sunglasses or a glare filter may work i haven't tried). Kinda bright at night heh =) because it's passive matrix it also has a lower viewable angle like about 20-40 degrees off center (not that bad though if you mount it in the right place) another bad thing is the cables it comes with are pretty short (only 5-6 feet i think i forgot to check, but it's long enough to go from foot space of passenger side to mount the LCD between the passenger and driver seats right behind the center gear shifter)

http://www.allelec.com/vgalcd.html
the page goes down sometimes though =(

for the LCD options, they even have a $200 touchscreen addon for it =) kinda dangerous though to have to use touchscreen in the car while driving though [i don't advise it, it's damned interesting to the passenger though!]

they also have color passive matrix and color active matrix as well for $300 and $500 i think (can't remember and the page is down right now)

they also sell surplus 73 watt
Compaq AT connector computer power supplies
for $9 each =)
6.75" x 3.75" x 2.875" = 73 cubic inches

a normal AT power supply is
6" x 5.5" x 3.375" = 111 cubic inches

so the compact Compaq supply is about 2/3 the size of a normal power supply (no ATX version of this that i know of though)

another good place to look for LCD kits is
http://www.flat-panel.com/skhome.htm
there are a lot nicer screens ones here but a LOT more expensive too.

I hope this helps a lot of people get a display solution =)

good luck all!

-Frank Grayson
grayson@cco.caltech.edu
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~fgrayson/index.html

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Frank Grayson

ADDENDUM!
I forgot to mention this.
DO NOT LEAVE THE SCREEN UNCOVERED IN THE CAR!
DIRECT SUNLIGHT WILL HARM THE SCREEN FAST!
in 20 minutes even if it's bright enough.
I accidentally left it in the sunlight for 30 minutes and when i came back the right side was hardly visible. Thankfully the screen has recovered and is quite normal now but I believe there is permanent damage done if it continues to be exposed to direct sunlight. I now have a glare filter on it (one of those cheap $20 fits all screens dealie from CompUSA) and leave it covered with a hand-towel whenever i leave the car.

This is my warning to those that would use one of the screens I suggested in my last post here. I accept no responsibility for anyone wasting $90 because of me heh heh.

-Frank Grayson

mjohnson

I have one of these LCDs (BTW it does work on NT). I can get it working on every PC I've tried except for the motherboard I specifically bought for my MP3 car project (what luck!).

The motherboard can't find the card. I have no clue why this is happening.

Do you have any suggestions, could it be that this board just won't work or is it something I can fix in the bios?

I think I've tried everything w/in the bios but I still can't get it to work....

Frank Grayson

What is the brand/model of your motherboard?
also what else is being used in the other slots and are there any extra devices built into the motherboard? Sound card/Video card/LAN/SCSI?

do you have any thing else that tries to use the same resources (IRQ/IO Address/DMA)?

Have you tried changing the LCD controller card's resource settings? (just for the computers resources, wouldn't want to change the LCD type configuration jumpers by mistake since the board doesn't have any manuals)

I forgot what the default settings were and what was available for each (i'm too busy to peel open my box [my custom designed plexiglass case has 12 screws on the lid and they're all VERY VERY VERY tight and look right now, it takes about 15-20 minutes to get the lid off and i'm not kidding, i need to replace the flathead screws with some hexagonal/philips screws) but if you post what those are I can give some suggestions (i'll try to look at it sometime soon but don't wait for me as I'm pretty busy this week)

-Frank Grayson

Frank Grayson

Price correction,
sorry I finally was able to access the
Alltech Electronics homepage
heh a lot cheaper than what i posted at the top

$200 for 640x480 passive matrix color LCD screen with ISA controller and cable.

$320 for 640x480 10.4" active matrix 262,144 color LCD screen with ISA controller card and cable

www.allelec.com/VGALCD.html
a lot nicer =)

-Frank Grayson

mprover

How big is the $200 passive color? Do I still need a video card or can I just usee the ISA card?

Frank Grayson

it doesn't say the size you should try calling them to find out how big it is I'm guessing the same size roughly 9-10" viewable. The included LCD VGA controller is all you need to run it so you only need that video card in the machine and no other video cards.

-Frank Grayson

mjohnson

It's a Gigabyte motherboard - and actually I believe that IRQ 5, 7, & 9 are reserved for the PCI slots and this might be my problem.

If I remember right these IRQs weren't configurable in the bios, but the rest were.

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mprover

Wow, $200 for passive 9-10 passive matrix is great! Better than trying to build a 6'' for the same price

jjohnson

FYI:

eio.com has a 12.1" color TFT LCD monitor for $350. It has a standard 15-pin VGA interface and 800x600 resolution. You could probably remove the VGA -> LCD converter board and get it working with other displays.

Here's the URL:

http://www.eio.com/mospecls.htm

--Jason

__________________
Jason Johnson
Yorba Linda, California
http://www.m2pc.com

M²PC Phase IV - *** PENDING ***

Frank Grayson

I completely forgot about that 12" active matrix screen at EIO for $350 thanks for bringing it up. That is yet another alternative =)
past $200 you might as well go up to that instead of the $320 active matrix screen i mentioned at Alltech USA.

-Frank Grayson

prado_sergio

anyone have the $200 for 640x480 passive matrix color LCD screen with ISA controller and cable , because it´s the price in the site but I don´t know how really works

inmytree

Although $200 is a damn good price for a 9 or so inch LCD.. you have to remember that it is passive matrix.. which is one of the first colour LCD displays made.. and they really aren't that good.. the active one would look heaps better.. but then, for $320, you may as well spend the extra for the EIO TFT, which is by far the best..

Scouse Monkey

bump

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Subwoofer87

wow i didn't even know there were posts dating back to 1999. old school

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