Old 486 Laptop Monitor

[Guest]

Hi All and a Happy New Year...I have an old 486 IBM laptop. My question is has anybody used the monitor portion to display something ? If so could you explain what to do to connect it up to a better PC. The screen is just the right size to run a GPS add-on which will make up part of my pedastel or MIP.Thanks for your thoughts...JB

[Guest]

Sorry to say that the LCD panel in a laptop is driven with custom made electronics and firmware. It is not likely that you'll be able to connect the LCD panel easily to a video card's output, (either RGB or DVI) as it would require specialized electronics to interface things correctly. RgdsRoland

[tigert 0]

>Sorry to say that the LCD panel in a laptop is driven with >custom made electronics and firmware. It is not likely that >you'll be able to connect the LCD panel easily to a video >card's output, (either RGB or DVI) as it would require >specialized electronics to interface things correctly. >Yea, the electronics that normal monitors contain inside them to interface to VGA are embedded in the laptop motherboard.The only way to use it is to use it as a whole. I guess something light that does not involve FS2002 and Windows might work. Perhaps FreeFD on Linux console, or something like a FMC, but one needs to write those from scratch I guess.It would be cool if someone wrote simply a gauge display that supported the XML gauges of fs2002, based on some portable code; maybe Linux framebuffer and SDL library and libxml. That way one could show gauges on remote machines much like Project Magenta (stuff without FS on every machine) - just any XML gauges. I think SDL runs on Windows and Linux atleast, so it would be useful for all kinds of older hardware.Tuomas