Holy Grail achieved?

I noticed this 'event' too. How is this useful to all those folks who regularly ask how to use their 'Book's LCD with other computers? All those old PowerBook displays used bespoke interfaces, I figure it extremely unlikely anything these guys are doing is gonna be applicable to more than a couple of 'Book panels.

Later 'Books use LVDS (or similar) standard LCDs which can be driven from commercially available driver boards, why reinvent the wheel?

I remain deeply skeptical about how relevant this project will be to most of us with old LCDs laying about.

dan k

Actually, I think it's an "interesting" project, in the sense that it was no doubt a fascinating exercise to design and build your own high-speed TTL-level analog-to-digital converter, which is essentially what this is.

It is worth noting, however, that their little circuit still requires using software to set up a custom video mode to generate dot timings acceptable to the LCD panel in question. It doesn't do any scan conversion or scaling like a "real" LCD controller. What you end up with after building this thing still isn't a complete "monitor" in the strict sense of being a plug-and-play replacement for a CRT.

All this does is reinforce the basic statement in the FAQ that, yes, interfacing a laptop monitor to a VGA port requires a lot more then twisting some wires together. (Whether it's a tricky-to-design homemade A/D board and some software hacks or a full-fledged controller board.) So the entry still stands unscathed.

--Peace

Certainly an admirable hack. But that's a heck of a lot of work, for a highly custom job. It might be of limited/no use to other people wanting to do the same thing with different laptops, but as someone who's tried to piece together an LCD/Controller system (unsuccessfully), my hat's off to them for pulling it off.