(LCD HELP!) My attempt at the new smallest mac portable.

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(LCD HELP!) My attempt at the new smallest mac portable.

Okay, I'm sure most of you have seen Peter Green's smallest mac portable mod, if not you can see it on riscx.com. In any case, I've decided to take a crack at it too, but eliminating the bulky lcd up top and making a smoother, more aesthetic clip-top lcd lid for the mac mini. What I don't know a lot about is lcd's. That's why I'm asking for help. At the moment I've got a 5" lcd screen and its accompanying board that came from a nintendo gamecube flip-top travel screen thing. I don't know if it's even possible to maybe rearrange the cords and put them into vga or dvi connector so it will even fit in the mini. If this isn't possible, can anyone point me to what I'd be looking for, or educate me so I can go to earthlcd or somewhere and make an educated choice? My apologies for being COMPLETELY knowledge-less when it comes to lcd screens.
Thank you all,
-Zozo

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This question gets asked so o

This question gets asked so often that we have a page for it.

http://www.applefritter.com/holygrail

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My question is, do you make s

My question is, do you make such a thing because there's actually a use for such a Mac, or is it simply making it to make it? Not trying to rain on your fun--I'm just curious if someone actually has a use.

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For the sake of making it rea

For the sake of making it really. And yes there's a page for it, but it doesn't tell where to get any of those things, nor does it really educate me about much except I need to buy something else... Which is why I'm asking to be educated, or pointed to the right items. Also, I asked because I saw this: http://www.applefritter.com/node/10929 and http://www.applefritter.com/node/17806 If folks have gotten PSOne lcd's to work, this is more or less the same thing as far as I can see.

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If you're set on it, you'll w

If you're set on it, you'll want to check out EarthLCD (http://store.earthlcd.com/s.nl/sc.7/category.5/.f), they're a manufacturer of Analog->Digital LCD controller cards.

As I read it, the folks who you reference basically built their own controller's. I've got limited hardware experience though, so don't quote me. Eudi or Dr. Bob are probably the folks to give decent advice. Unless I'm mistaken though, without a solid electronics background, you won't be building your own.

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After further readings it see

After further readings it seems that http://starfox.ucc.asn.au/carcomp/serio_lcd.htm has discovered that PSOne lcd's made by sony actually send a vga signal out, so with the right video card (God knows if the mini's is a working one), it's possible to run one of these without a custom board.

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Your mini should have come wi

Your mini should have come with a VGA adapter and an S-Video/composite (ie TV out) adapter too. So you're in luck, assuming the Gamecube screen takes standard TV type composite video out of the GC. Try it on the composite video adapter first before you go cutting and soldering anything, just to see what it's like. From what I've seen around, the resolution of those screens is pretty lame. But yeah, try it out and see.

The page I've seen about PSOne video to VGA hack, the guy is very specific that only the genuine Sony screens can take the hack. Even the 3rd party PSOne screens can't do it, it's specific to the circuit in that model.

So unless you can find a site saying someone has done it with a GameCube screen (ie a completely different piece of circuitry), and there's really really detailed instructions, and it's the exact same make of screen you have, don't get your VGA hopes up. Stick to converting the signal to composite at the Mac end.

This isn't quite the "Holy Grail" though. The PSone and the Gamecube LCDs do have a controller board with them (in them, whatever) so they're not quite the "hey I found this old laptop screen can I use it on my desktop." described in the FAQ. It's just the 'board accepts composite, not VGA or DVI. The PSOne VGA hack is both a hell of a lot easier than designing and building your own LVDS controller (as the French guys did) and a hell of a lot cheaper than buying one from earthlcd.

But yeah, that's not the screen you have Beee

If you poke around my blog you might find some useful links.

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Oh I understand that it's tha

Oh I understand that it's that exact model and everything, and I'm actually thinking of going out and getting one just for the sake of experimentation, but for now I need to try and get this to work... It's got the plug for the gamecube's av out on it, so I'd guess it's component, just don't have a clue how to go about finding out which wires are which after taking off the connector..

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Why do you want to take the wires off, when there's a working composite out adapter that came with the Mini? And I'm not 100% certain, but I would guess that adapter does a lot more than just plug conversion.

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Have you seen the end of the

Have you seen the end of the gamecube a/v cable that actually goes into the gamecube? That's what I'm working with here...

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Nope. Can you put up a picture? Is the other end of the cable permanently attached to the screen? If not, give us a close up picture of the sockets on the monitor too if you can.

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I actually don't have a digit

I actually don't have a digital camera or a scanner... But I'll try searching the web for at least a picture of the connector. And it actually isn't permanently attached to the screen.

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So anyway, I gather it's not your standard RCA jack as found on the back of TVs, DVDs, stereos etc.

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iirc it looks sort of like th

iirc it looks sort of like the iPod dock connector...

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/edit/ Scratch that, check th

/edit/ Scratch that, check this out:

Gamecube LCD to VGA conversion

The only problem I forsee with doing it this way is the Windows and Linux people use a utility called PowerStrip to access hidden settings on the video card, to make it sync up. However, you will probably be able to deduce the pinouts from this article and wire up to an RCA plug, then run the Mini in PAL/NTSC mode via the DVI-S-Video adapter.

You might also want to check out these links:

GameSX - all about video game hacking

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