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druber · Jul 30, 2004, 11:26 AM

I've got a chance to buy a used iBook on the cheap. Base model 800mhz, and I guess the case has been painted (and from the sound of things, crapped up pretty good). So I'm off on wild flights of fancy of what I might potentially do with it. What would you go for?

I'm thinking I could try an in-car hack. Or potentially try to steal the screen to use with a different computer. Has anyone ever managed to run an iBook screen from say a Tower? I'm not going to buy the thing for parts, but if I can come up with a really useful solution, I'm gonna pick this up.

VukOnCrack · Jul 31, 2004, 04:20 PM

Originally posted by druber:
I've got a chance to buy a used iBook on the cheap. Base model 800mhz, and I guess the case has been painted (and from the sound of things, crapped up pretty good). So I'm off on wild flights of fancy of what I might potentially do with it. What would you go for?

I'm thinking I could try an in-car hack. Or potentially try to steal the screen to use with a different computer. Has anyone ever managed to run an iBook screen from say a Tower? I'm not going to buy the thing for parts, but if I can come up with a really useful solution, I'm gonna pick this up.

I'm in essentially the same situation with a first generation itbook. I'd love to rip the screen out and use it via a dvi connection with a tower. Does anyone know if this is possible (or just too much trouble, i.e.. the screen doesn't have the right hardware to interface this way, etc.)?

uberwald · Aug 2, 2004, 09:51 AM

it's astronomically improbable that you will be able to make the screen work seperate from the machine.

COmie JOe · Aug 2, 2004, 05:36 PM

I would confer uberwald's statement. I it a totally different interface, and the likelihood to being able to do it rather slim. Then when you look at price vs performance you would be better off buying a retail 15 or 17 LCD

VukOnCrack · Aug 2, 2004, 10:19 PM

Originally posted by COmie JOe:
I would confer uberwald's statement. I it a totally different interface, and the likelihood to being able to do it rather slim. Then when you look at price vs performance you would be better off buying a retail 15 or 17 LCD

That depends. Commenting on price/performance when you have no idea if it's possible or what it would take if it is seems rather capricious. If possible, might it take a lot of time? Probably. Apart from this, how can you comment on cost?

Seriosuly, a nice 15-inch wide screen display that I already own versus a standard 1280x1024 appeals to me more. The later would cost $500-600 for a decent screen. The former? Well, that's what this thread is all about. If you don't have facts don't be dismissive.

druber · Aug 3, 2004, 10:37 PM

Found a couple folks online who tried the same thing. The plug-in from the LCD panel to the MB in the iBook is proprietary to the maxx. So no dice there. This guy I'm talking to also seems shady to the maxx, and I probably won't buy. But I'm still curious what creative uses people could come up with for a wifiBook.

COmie JOe · 03:48 PM

Originally posted by VukOnCrack:
That depends. Commenting on price/performance when you have no idea if it's possible or what it would take if it is seems rather capricious. If possible, might it take a lot of time? Probably. Apart from this, how can you comment on cost?

Yes it would be rather capricious of me to say those things if I was new here and just liked to jump to conclusions about people who have been members for years and have hundreds of posts. But enough bashing and more to the point. Things you would need to make this happen:

1. Working display
2. Pin out of said display describing what each pins use and such
3. Proper connectors (something to adapt from the flat ribbon connector)
4. Inverter for Display (you can chop the one out of the PB but that might be a little dangerous having 400 volts insulated by electrical tape
5. A custom analog to digital converter, or a TFT DSTNB to DVI conversion to be more precise (main killer here, with the having to custom make one from scratch and all)
6. An enclosure (the easy part)
7. An electrical engineering degree with a focus on digital to analog conversion/Digital to digital
8. Lots of time to custom fabricate most of this

Well that or you could maybe find a dead desktop LCD display that uses the same identical LCD and just pop it in, but that is as likely to happen as someone picking the winning lotto numbers twice in a row. But it might just be a better idea to sell the display on ebay or to a service provider and take that money and buy a real display seeing how this hack job setup would run you around $400 assuming your time doesn�t cost anything. For $379.97 you could get a SyncMaster 712n 17-inch LCD Monitor from compUSA or other retailer.

Also some may remember this topic coming up a long time ago:
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...ght=Laptop+LCD

P.S. I can remember a few other times this has popped up but that was the only one I could find.

COmie JOe · Aug 5, 2004, 03:48 PM

I think that making a picture frame would be rather nice, slap an airport car in there and do Apple network assistant to it, though the one thing I had issues with is making it slim enough to mount on the wall. Also you will want to remove the power button from the top case and mount it to the enclosure so you can power it off if it has a kernel panic or crashes.