Build Digital Picture Frame from broken laptop

About 30 seconds of Googling found the following links...

Give it up. It's unlikely that you'll stumble across anything compatible. And if you did, you'd still be better off to fix the laptop, sell it and buy a picture frame.

Pick up a free working 386/486/P1 laptop and use that. IF you banged on my door, I'd give you one. They are everywhere cause they won't run current software.

But when you're all done, you'll still be unhappy. Picture frames are popular cause...well...they look like picture frames. You're gonna end up with a big box of stuff, unless you let the keyboard stick out for all to see. And you'll hear the hard drive churning. It'll be fun for a week, then go back in the basement where it belongs.

I had a cool kiosk computer with a touchpanel on it. Did a bunch of interfacing to my network, wrote some home automation control software...was really cool for about an hour. Tripped over it for a few weeks before it went to the basement.

I've developed a project technique that works well. Imagine the cool toy you want to build. Get a cardboard box about that size. Draw a picture of the cool toy on the box and place it where it will go. If the box is still there in a month, consider completing the project. So far, I've never finished anything ;-) All the fun is in the planning and conceptualization anyway... mike

On Mon, 04 Dec 2006 21:31:31 -0800, snowdogdb Has Frothed:

Go buy one.

What you want to do is technically possible but generally not economically feasible. Getting a controller card in single unit quantities is going to be next to impossible (price not withstanding), and if you can find one, it's going to cost you more than what you can buy a complete monitor for (I've been getting some 19" dual input (VGA/DVI) monitors with speakers in the $120 range [after rebate]). The connectors and cables are very specialized and those also are hard to find and expensive in single unit quantities. There is no standardization to anything. Almost every model of LCD panel is different.

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

Great input from everyone. Thanks for your help. Well, it sounds like it would be more valuable as an exersize than as an actual usable product.

Have a Happy Holidays!

Barry Watzman wrote:

Probably not. Valuable exercises teach you stuff you can use elsewhere. Unless you plan a future hooking up undocumented mismatched displays and controllers, you won't learn much useful. But you will get plenty frustrated by the lack of documentation. It should be a simple problem of signal matching, format conversion, logic design. It's more likely to turn into a BIG reverse engineering project.

Take a night job at a fast food restaurant. In the few days it will take you to save up enough to buy a picture frame, you'll actually learn a LOT about something that you can actually in the future...human nature... oh...and don't forget you'll also learn Spanish ;-) mike