LCDInfo.com

One of these small and handy 7" TFT-screens ended up in my posession (Panasonic EDTCB07QLF), and the question follows: What fun (and usefull) should I/could I do with it?

A few pictures of the TFT can be found @ http://sam.aqua-web.org/TFT/

On the internet there is very little information to be found about this TFT = all the connections and wireing is a mystery...

Lucky for me japala@MetkuMods told about this place, hope you have some answeres to this prob

Orginal post @ MetkuMods >> http://metku.net/hwforum/viewtopic.php?t=3688

About the wireing on the board:

On the righside (bottompart) of the backside of the screen there is one 15 pin and one 14 pin connector, these are attached to a small board with the followin labels:
- TFT JPK1432B3-D
- CN603
- 794V-0 T
Picture of the connectors: http://sam.aqua-web.org/TFT/img_1047_std.jpg

On top of this there is a dip-switch with four dips.

At the left top of the back three wires are comming out, these are connected to a small board (seperated from the display). This is probably the power connectors(?) Picture: http://sam.aqua-web.org/TFT/img_1038_std.jpg

Hope this information gives you a clue of what to do with this to get it working, the idea is to attach this to my firewall/server computer so that it is mounted to the computer case.

It could be 18-bit interface in that lcd. To drive that somekind controller would be required. There are separate controllerboards that take VGA input but you should be prepared to pay at least 150€ for those.
Also the problem here is the lack of data about the connector pinouts for the lcd. They would need to be found out first. This information might be buried somewhere in web but the problem is finding it.

The separate board in your picture seems to be the CCFL inverter for the backlight.

The information i found about the display said that it is a 18-bit display. The original motherboard for this display should still be found among the "junk" downstairs... So one could think that the controller could be found on this board(?)

To get this screen connected to a computer as a second display would be quite neat Even though it probably wount go higher then 640x480 resolution.

_________________
sam@aqua-web.org
salonen @ IrcNet
Location: Turku - Finland

Found the motherboard and its powersupply, I will take some pictures of the board and all stuff connected to it later today when I get home.

The motherboard itself is equipped with the following: LPT, 2 COM ports, VGA port, floppy connector (laptop style connector), IDE connection, SCSI-connection (labeled optional), 2 x RJ45 connectors, keyboard connection (ps2). The board is powered by a AMD 5x86 133MHz (PR75) 486DX4-processor and has one 72pin memory-slot (32Mb memory installed).

Tried to boot it up with a external display without any success, a led lighten up, thats all that happend... Should probably try to connect the TFT to it and try the boot again.

_________________
sam@aqua-web.org
salonen @ IrcNet
Location: Turku - Finland

Heureka! The CPU was inserted in wrong position resulting in no boot After switching it into the right position the system booted up nicely! It seems like a standard PC configuration. Sadly I don't have any 2.5" IDE-drives nore compatible floppy-drives here at work so I can't test how well it works for real, also the TFT display is at home so I can't test if it's working or not...

I will come back with more specific information about this neat little system later!

_________________
sam@aqua-web.org
salonen @ IrcNet
Location: Turku - Finland

Here is the boot-up screen content and the system summary from the BIOS:

Boot-up screen:


System summary from the BIOS:

_________________
sam@aqua-web.org
salonen @ IrcNet
Location: Turku - Finland

Here are some updated pictures of the TFT. Once connected to the motherboard it works like a dream, I had an old laptop 2.5" hard-disk with Windows95 installed, and using that disk the "computer" booted up without any problems.

Do anybody have a qlue if this screen possibly could be wired to connect to a regular 15pin VGA-connector? The screen is btw 800x600px, not 640x480px as i first thought.

Here are the pictures of the screen in action > http://sam.aqua-web.org/TFT2/

_________________
sam@aqua-web.org
salonen @ IrcNet
Location: Turku - Finland

And here are some closeups of the motherboard, it's chips, connectors etc. >> http://sam.aqua-web.org/MB/

_________________
sam@aqua-web.org
salonen @ IrcNet
Location: Turku - Finland

To connect the display to the 15pin VGA connector you would need the controllerboard that I mentioned earlier.

I tried looking some data for the 92C178 lcd controller but didn't find anything useful. With the help of the 92C178 IC pinout it might have been possible to find out part of the lcd pinout. I found some reference to the 92C178 from some datasheet archive but they were asking $50 for access to the database.

So currently it looks like the best option would be to use it with it's own motherboard that you've got running.

There seems to as little information availeble about the chips used on that board as there is about the screen Is there by any chance some "ready to use" solutions for controlling a 18-bit screen like this one?


The problem with this solution is the power of the motherboard... A 486DX4@133MHz is not really good for anything in these days And with the lack of a soundcard you can't even use it as a neat little mp3 jukebox...

_________________
sam@aqua-web.org
salonen @ IrcNet
Location: Turku - Finland

Yes, the ready to use solution would be the separate controller board. The prices on those start from maybe 150€. In Finland www.alpha.fi has some but they don't seem to like selling to private persons. Maybe if you'd like to buy big enough quantity then they might be interested.
Also when looking for a controllerboard you should keep in mind that you need to be able to configure the controller for your display. And the pinout of the display would be also necessary to have before even considering controllerboard.

Well thats out of my budget For the moment it looks like the screen and the motherboard is going to jani Ponkko @ MetkuMods for some moddingproject... At least it will end up in good use Probably as somekind of servermonitorin tool or a irc-terminal.

_________________
sam@aqua-web.org
salonen @ IrcNet
Location: Turku - Finland