hooking up a DC to a laptop!!!

**mxz600** · July 13th, 2005, 00:33

K guys, time for the smart cookies out there to share some knowledge. I've been thinking and I want to hook up my dreamcast to a Monitor, not just any monitor, my laptop monitor!!! hard i know, seeing it has no video In port and everything is enclosed, signal and power. So i takes it apart and it looks like i got it down to 18 wires that would constitute the signal that a computer monitor cable would replicate. Now, HOW DO I FIGURE OUT WHAT WIRE IS WHAT so i can hook up a connector to it and see if i can get a dreamcast to play on my laptop.... any ideas?

**ClumsyCliff** · July 13th, 2005, 01:53

I'd approach it this way...

Take the Make/Model of your laptop, and use to attempt to derive the Manufacturer and model number of the LCD screen. This of course assumes that inspecting the LCD screen doesn't provide this information.

Once you have the manufacturer and model # of the LCD, it shouldn't be too hard to scrounge up a spec sheet on that particular unit which should reveal all you need to know to pull off the mod. I'd use google for just about everything above, it rarely lets me down when trying to find some obscure bit of info.

Good luck and enjoy!

**ptr.exe** · July 13th, 2005, 15:45

I was planning on doing this but found that it was just too much hassle, if your lucky you may find the pinouts you need, but not likely.

Good luck anyway.

btw, this has been moved to the hardware forum, and the other one deleted, dont double post to get more attention please.

**mxz600** · July 21st, 2005, 18:57

I did not get no satisfaction from the supplyer of the laptop, or when i found out the make and model of the laptop LCD. It was a Hyundai make and model number was whatever, and i typed this in and got e-tailers wanting to sell the stuff. so no luck.

So i decide to take each wire off the plug individually one at a time, the plug is the one going onto the motherboard. Some wires did nothing, some wires made the screen go funny/squiggly and some wires made the color off a bit. when i ground these color wires, there was 4 of them i would get one of 4 colors, red, green blue and purple. Am i on to something? can i use this to figure out the connections? how would i know what the connections are supposed to be on a normal VGA plug? HELP PLEASE

**ptr.exe** · July 21st, 2005, 20:24

You lucky git, you may have found the wires for RGB, (dont know what the purple one is) but anyway RGB is part of what is needed for you to turn the monitor into a standard VGA monitor. RGB correspondes to the colours you found; Red Green Blue, they make up the picture.

VGA has 6 basic components, R, G, B, (you may have found these) then Hsync and Vsync and obviously ground. The H and V syncs when grounded will make the monitor roll up and down in the direction of the sync, ie. Horizontal sync will make it roll left or right.

Finding these wires by that method will be really lucky, You need these 6 to hook it up to a DC.

How many wires are there going from the LCD into the mobo?

**mxz600** · July 22nd, 2005, 12:16

there are alot, like25 or so, but that sends power to the Lamp also, i think that eliminates 6 so im left with 19 or so, But i wonder if an LCD has Hsync and Vsynch because its an LCD screen, not a Tube monitor?

**ptr.exe** · July 22nd, 2005, 17:23

I thought all VGA monitors used Hsync and Vsync, perhaps not, maybe LCD has something that performs the same purpose, yet is a differant signal? So the H and V recieved will be converted into its needed signal.

**semicolo** · July 22nd, 2005, 17:46

If it's rgb, the syncs are needed since rgb are analog signals, in fact that's pity to have rgb sent to lcds since video is converted to analog from the video card and then converted back to digital for the lcd to display it.
Even with dvi there must be some sort of clock line somewhere, let's search this on the web :-)

**semicolo** · July 22nd, 2005, 17:52

Yep there's at least 2 clock lines on dvi (in fact one of the two takes two pins).
Anyway the purple color you get with the fourth wire is strange and shouldn't the color appear when connecting to 1V ? if I'm right on analog video 0V means black (intensity 0) and 1V full intensity.