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Spent the day at Akihabara today. Much Kudos to Liz and Meia for being able to find stuff in the area to occupy themselves while I went off foraging. Liz's birthday present was a trip to Tokyo Disney Sea (which was great fun), some ¥ to spend in Akihabara, and not questioning my sanity over any of my purchases there-in.
The last bit is rather important with me in the famous Den-Den town. I've posted about it before, but it's as awesome as ever. Lots and lots of little tiny stores selling obscure electronics bits. In addition to about 300 x M2 nuts + bolts (srsly, try finding them to buy) and some other nifty stuff, I went to the store associated with http://www.thecoconet.com. Let me just say, negotiating for the purchase of LCD components when you don't speak Japanese isn't a hobby for the feint of heart.
I bought a most awesome LCD monitor kit.. 7 inch 1024x768 (Sharp X2001DP?) LCD panel + power supply + inverter + cables + control panel. Ducktronics is going into LCDs when I get home, and it will involve a layer cake of evil :D The controller takes VGA, DVI, SVideo and Composite, and does an awesome job of scaling too.
But back to the title. I hang out on a number of modding boards around the internet. The "Holy Grail" is people posting and expecting an easy answer about re-using the LCD out of their old laptop (see http://www.applefritter.com/holygrail ). The response is generally "blah blah needs a custom controllers blah blah too hard blah blah". To an extent, it's right. You do need a controller, and it's not that easy. But it's not as hard as they tend to make it out to be. There are two main types of signalling - TTL and LVDS. Newer stuff (last 8 years or so) is all LVDS. LVDS comes in four flavours - 8 bit 2 channel, 8 bit 1 channel, 6 bit 2 channel and 6 bit 1 channel. The more bits/channels, the more data can be thrown at the LCD. Then the hard part is getting a cable (as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shifuimam will attest to) and Bob's your uncle (actually, I have an uncle Robert, great guy). If you check the right datasheets, you may find that panels/controllers can be swapped around pretty easily.
My products of Joseph of Arimathia, let me show you them - http://www.aitendo.co.jp/product/395 (LVDS and TTL) and http://www.aitendo.co.jp/product/797 (LVDS and TTL - no DVI/Sound) - with these two products (maybe a few adaptors too), and a bit of time and skills, you could almost certainly get any LCD shipped in a laptop or desktop in the last 10 years working. But look at the price, and the fact you'd need to ship them in from Japan. Is it /really/ worth it? I don't think so.
I'm personally waiting for 20 and 24 inch iMacs to start becoming obselete (mm 2012 maybe? :P) and see who is first to market with a kit to turn them into regular LCDs. Extra kudos for keeping the iSight working.
The last bit is rather important with me in the famous Den-Den town. I've posted about it before, but it's as awesome as ever. Lots and lots of little tiny stores selling obscure electronics bits. In addition to about 300 x M2 nuts + bolts (srsly, try finding them to buy) and some other nifty stuff, I went to the store associated with http://www.thecoconet.com. Let me just say, negotiating for the purchase of LCD components when you don't speak Japanese isn't a hobby for the feint of heart.
I bought a most awesome LCD monitor kit.. 7 inch 1024x768 (Sharp X2001DP?) LCD panel + power supply + inverter + cables + control panel. Ducktronics is going into LCDs when I get home, and it will involve a layer cake of evil :D The controller takes VGA, DVI, SVideo and Composite, and does an awesome job of scaling too.
But back to the title. I hang out on a number of modding boards around the internet. The "Holy Grail" is people posting and expecting an easy answer about re-using the LCD out of their old laptop (see http://www.applefritter.com/holygrail ). The response is generally "blah blah needs a custom controllers blah blah too hard blah blah". To an extent, it's right. You do need a controller, and it's not that easy. But it's not as hard as they tend to make it out to be. There are two main types of signalling - TTL and LVDS. Newer stuff (last 8 years or so) is all LVDS. LVDS comes in four flavours - 8 bit 2 channel, 8 bit 1 channel, 6 bit 2 channel and 6 bit 1 channel. The more bits/channels, the more data can be thrown at the LCD. Then the hard part is getting a cable (as
shifuimam will attest to) and Bob's your uncle (actually, I have an uncle Robert, great guy). If you check the right datasheets, you may find that panels/controllers can be swapped around pretty easily.My products of Joseph of Arimathia, let me show you them - http://www.aitendo.co.jp/product/395 (LVDS and TTL) and http://www.aitendo.co.jp/product/797 (LVDS and TTL - no DVI/Sound) - with these two products (maybe a few adaptors too), and a bit of time and skills, you could almost certainly get any LCD shipped in a laptop or desktop in the last 10 years working. But look at the price, and the fact you'd need to ship them in from Japan. Is it /really/ worth it? I don't think so.
I'm personally waiting for 20 and 24 inch iMacs to start becoming obselete (mm 2012 maybe? :P) and see who is first to market with a kit to turn them into regular LCDs. Extra kudos for keeping the iSight working.
