Looking to mod laptop screen

Saiyanthou said:

I'll take that as a compliment

StuiWooi, I'll admit my google-fu is not strong but the company's I managed to find with the cable had either no stock, crazy long lead times or didn't seem legit.

Mike's idea of a nice 24" is good but portability might be a problem, especially if you go for the úber dell beast.

Mods of laptops etc come with a risk factor, you can either persevere to get the part you want or make your own and hold your breath. Me, I have little patience.

If you manage to get the 'actual' cable please give details: price, time etc. And good luck if you wish to try the mod! Meanwhile I will enjoy my laptop 1080p gaming goodness as we have weather downtime .

J

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Ok, it seems there is no stopping you!

Even if you get all the hardware in place, you're still going to have to modify/hack the BIOS so the laptop can support the new resolution of the new sceen... Which can be a little risky.

I've been trying to hack the BIOS on my Acer Aspire One, just to tinker with the brightness settings for the screen, and it's a bit of a minefield...

A nice place to start it to brush up on your assembly language skills.

MikeHunt79 said:

Ok, it seems there is no stopping you!

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MikeHunt79 said:

Even if you get all the hardware in place, you're still going to have to modify/hack the BIOS so the laptop can support the new resolution of the new sceen...

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Not True in this case. The Hardware of the laptop is capable of the 1080p resolution of the replacement screen, demonstrated by the HDMI 1080p port. No BIOS hacking necessary as the screen and HDMI port are essentially interlinked and must be capable of the same resolution, only limited by the WXGA screen that comes with the model.

The LVDS chip on the MB is capable of dual LVDS and is auto sensing, i.e. when you plug in a dual LVDS screen it switches to dual, how exactly I'm not sure, I think it's something to do with the clock timing.

Sorry If I'm encouraging the possibly inept to void there warranties and hacksaw out parts of their laptop in order to make an MTV style 'Pimp my Laptop' show, this was not my intention.

Saiyanthou said:

Not True in this case. The Hardware of the laptop is capable of the 1080p resolution of the replacement screen, demonstrated by the HDMI 1080p port. No BIOS hacking necessary as the screen and HDMI port are essentially interlinked and must be capable of the same resolution, only limited by the WXGA screen that comes with the model.

The LVDS chip on the MB is capable of dual LVDS and is auto sensing, i.e. when you plug in a dual LVDS screen it switches to dual, how exactly I'm not sure, I think it's something to do with the clock timing.

Sorry If I'm encouraging the possibly inept to void there warranties and hacksaw out parts of their laptop in order to make an MTV style 'Pimp my Laptop' show, this was not my intention.

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Nice, it does seem like things have changed a bit over the years.

I remember using 10" LCD's with a 640x480 res a few years back, and these used awful hirose connectors which used to wear out after only a few connections... Each resolution screen used to have a different number of pins (31 pins for 640 res, 41 pins for 1024 res, etc.), and things like swapping screens used to be near impossible.

Now with LVDS it does seem like this is doable, so please excuse my earlier scepticism. I'll be interested to see how this turns out however, so I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

MikeHunt79 said:

I think the best mod here would be to just plug a nice big 24" screen into the HDMI/DVI port - then you'll have a better screen than any 'gaming' laptop.

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Been there, got that, old laptop is plugged into it, and this one can be aswell (3 connectors) but the old one's battery died which I never replaced so it sits there all un-mobile with my 3TB external storage plugged in, and I want this one to actually be portable.

Saiyanthou said:

StuiWooi, I'll admit my google-fu is not strong but the company's I managed to find with the cable had either no stock, crazy long lead times or didn't seem legit.

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Aye there is a 2 week lead time on the cable which is a bit lame, but it's alright for the moment as I was sent the wrong screen, ie not 1080 capable one, so I have nothing to try plugging in yet lol

When I receive all the necessary bits I'll repost with some info.

Ok so I got the new cable today and despite the 6920 and the 6530 having the same lcd module layout the cable(s) behind are obviously different (I never opened up the screen on my 6920 so who's to know?) The new cable simply won't reach where it needs to go. I'd post pictures if, well...if I could be bothered but it's been a long day and I have to work on a presentation tonight so no pretty pictures lol
This does mean though that I have a spare cable and can extract the necessary wires to beef up the original so, if possible, could you give a little guide on which go where saiyanthou? Pretty please?? It seems like it might be quite obvious as there are gaps of 2 on the connectors on each end but it's always nice to know...

Shame about the cable, strange too. Especially if you got the part number directly from the service manual, I would check to make sure they sent you the right part. If it's too short though are the cables you want to remove going to reach?

In any event here's how its done. I've misplaced the wiring drawing I'd made so will have to explain how to do it.

NOTE: Before attempting any internal disassembly remove all power sources.

This is the pinout from the back of the LCD panel.



This is the connector from the LCD panel and other ancillaries (camera, microphone, etc) to the motherboard.



You should be missing cables from 20,21,23,24,26,27,29 and 30 on the LCD side of the cable, these are where your replacement cables will go and need to go the the area on the MB connector marked in red. The ground cables should all already be connected, if not then do not begin unless you are sure you have enough cables. The area above the red circle should already have the odd data lines connected and you basically want to mirror that.

When you've done this don't completely reassemble, first layout in a way that won't short anything and power on, use pause break to look at the acer boot screen. If the acer symbol is bizarrely coloured then your clock is probably either polarity wrong or on a data line, if your image is clean but missing lines then your clock is good but data lines are mixed up.

As far as I can remember the order was Clock, DataLine2, Dataline1, Dataline0.

I think that's all you should need that I can find, yeah, sorry I lost the drawing. Good luck, and please be careful. Removing the connectors from the mini molex bad boys and reinserting is a MF pain!

Johno

Firstly the cables from the new one are long enough it's just that they were wrapped in the silver tape in an odd way so I couldn't make them reach.
Secondly after I posted (and worked some) I suffered from impatience and had a go; removed 4 sets of double twisted wires easily enough, although I did slip once and **** the connector, but that's the discard cable so I'll just be more careful with the real thing.
Thanks very much for the pin outs!

Hi there. I read this with interest as I recently bought an Acer 6935g with a smashed screen and decided to upgrade it to the full HD version.

I had the same problem with only half the vertical pixels displaying which is how I came across this thread.

Although the missing pins on the lcd are the same, it seems to be a little different from the 6930 at the motherboard end.

This is the connector on the motherboard:



and these, to the best of my knowledge is the pinout on the lcd:

1 ground
2 +3.3v
3 +3.3v
4 +3.3v
5 nc/key
6 DDC Clock
7 DDC Data
8 A D0- ORANGE
9 A D0+ WHITE
10 ground
11 A D1- RED
12 A D1+ WHITE
13 ground
14 A D2- BROWN
15 A D2+ WHITE
16 ground
17 A Clock- BLACK
18 A Clock+ WHITE
19 ground
20 B D0-
21 B D0+
22 ground
23 B D1-
24 B D1+
25 ground
26 B D2-
27 B D2+
28 ground
29 B Clock-
30 B Clock+

I have ordered myself a cable from an Acer 6920 which I hope is the same (not arrived yet) and will use the wires from that.

I am guessing that this is how it should be wired up:



Anyway, once the cable arrives I shall let you know how it goes and if any of the info is wrong I shall update it. Thought the info might be helpful for those looking to do the same.

Iain.

I went to work in America for a month and ended up buying an Asus G51JX for silly money with stupid specs. Going to sell the 1080p 6530G on eBay. Experimenting is fun.

Did any of you manage to get this working? I had the first version of this laptop, which was returned many times due to warranty issues, That had 1080p, which was very useful. it was also capable of running 64-bit VMWare.
After 6 returns in 1 year I insisted, and eventually received a replacement. this was 768, but had blu-ray and a Hydros BIOS which had 64-bit virtual disabled; and couldn't be edited. Last weekend my son (2) knocked the laptop off the sofa, and the screen cracked. £10 difference between 1080 and 720, I thought it's a no brainer, I'll grap the 1080p and be little happier. I am now here, because I obviously have run into the same problem as you guys. I don't think I can go as far as modifying the cable myself.

you will need a new data cable.