February 17, 2004

12:43 PM

I tore apart an old, effectively dead PowerBook 540c in order to salvage workable parts. Most notably, the active matrix TFT LCD screen, a Toshiba LTM09C017, was in fine condition. I would love to try to hook this up to an SVGA out, but I can't find pinouts or spec sheets. Can you?
posted by plinth to (2 comments total)

In case you are unaware, this doesn't sound at all like a trivial thing--it's not just a matter of hooking the right wires up to the right pins. LCDs are digital devices, so you'd need some sort of analog to digital converter to hook a standard VGA signal to it. (Dedicated LCD monitors have A/D converters built in, so that they can be interfaced with standard VGA cards.)
posted by Galvatron at 1:38 PM on February 17, 2004

It is feasable but will be time-consuming and costly.

Find your controller here. It will be specific to your model of LCD. (I don't see your model number listed but if you e-mail them or google around you might find a similar model number that will suffice.) If they don't have it there's a list of suppliers here.

A good discussion of the matter is here, and a web page showing how it's done is here.

Good luck to you!
posted by j.edwards at 2:36 PM on February 17, 2004