Three West

A few days ago I went ahead and dismantled the IBM ThinkPad T21 I had lying around. The laptop still worked but there was a problem with the backlight and it had some serious wear and tear. The backlight issue can easily be fixed with a new inverter. So with that in mind, I proceeded to take the laptop apart.

I pulled out the hard drive, memory, speakers, LCD Panel, LCD panel supports, and couple of miscellaneous parts. The LCD Panel is in good shape. The Gallery below shows the dismantling process.

The greatest challenge is the LCD controller. Before I started this project I had no reason to learn how LCD monitors worked or what made them work. But since I pulled this panel, I’ve had to figure out what I would need to not only make it work, but how to get a signal from my camera to it. Throughout the the process I learned a few things I will share with you (bare with me, I’m also still learning).

From what I’ve learned, one could get a LCD controller board that simply has jacks on it so that you can hook it up to a PC. They are plentiful and pretty cheap. However, if you want AV jacks for using your panel with a camera or other input devices, you need an LCD controller (or A/D board) that has multimedia jacks. If I understand correctly (we’ll see when I test it), these are just the boards that come standard with all of the LCD TVs. These boards however are not regularly sold outside of an LCD TV. Some places (literally about 2 places) do sell them direct to consumers at acceptable prices but I’d rather shoot for affordable.

In light of this information, I feel I can safely assume one could simply get not only the A/D board from an LCD TV and use it on any compatible LCD panel but also pull with it, the inverter, button bar, and power board (if required). Of course you wouldn’t do this with just any LCD TV. You want to obtain an LCD TV with a cracked or broken LCD panel (only) OR any problems not related to a faulty board. If the LCD TV has a backlight problem, no big deal, you will just have to replace the inverter and in some cases, maybe the light tube itself. I will stick to only cracked or Broken LCD panels or ones with inverter problems since this part can easily be replaced. Any TVs with A/D board issues defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to do.

The back up plan is being able to just buy the A/D board new from one of the places that sells them at an acceptable price. But lets try to be a little more thrifty with this project, shall we? I’ve bid on some great broken LCD TVs on Ebay. It’s been forever since I’ve used the site but the prices for these TVs are very reasonable and so is the shipping. I also wanted to get an A/D board that would support the maximum resolution my LCD panel is capable of (1024×768). Getting an A/D board that can support this resolution and higher is a plus because I can always just update the panel at some point.

So right now, I’m waiting to win an auction and get the TV to pull parts from. Stay tuned for part 3!