Interface desktop with laptop monitor?

[Triode]

I have a PC that needs a monitor, and I just realized that I have a broken laptop with a nice screen. The laptop got a new screen just before going out of warranty, then it kept overheating and shutting down, the video card is prone to freezing and the hard drive looses data, and it's pretty outdated by today's standards anyway, we haven't used it for 3 years, its a dell inspiron 5100, in short, I can scrap it.

Does anyone know if it's possible to adapt a laptop monitor to take a VGA signal from a desktop so I can use it as a flat panel? Keep in mind I can't do it by networking with the laptop cause most of the components are very unreliable.

I've found this Instructable on the topic, but it relys on the laptop working to some extent, atleast the processor, and what I'm wondering is if there's any hope of just jacking a signal into the screen. I realize that I will need to provide the right kind of power as well.

 

[Triode]

Well, in a strange twist, I managed to repair the laptop while looking at the connections. It looks like the guy who did the warranty repair removed a thermal pad and didn't put it back. I stuck a spare one I had in and the laptop is running fine. It turns out it's a 2.4ghz with 256mb of ram. Maybe now I'll just put 1 gig of ram in it (about $30 for this kind) and let the misses use it for facebook and such. Odd that I didn't figure out what was wrong with it when I had it taken apart 3 years ago. But in my defense, a missing thermal pad isn't obvious. Now what to do about that CNC PC with no monitor.

 

[mdanh2002]

I think laptop LCD panels do not follow any well-known interface standards. They have proprietary display drivers which are usually some ICs soldered on the motherboard. In other words you can't make the LCD display anything on its own, unless you have the schematics and know how to interact with the display driver, which is something I wouldn't attempt.

 

[StudentSA]

The way a laptop screen is "run" is highly dependant on the manufacturer... You cannot just send VGA to a laptop screen, you would need a interface/convertor of some sort.

Lucky the laptop is fixed else the screen is quite useless.

 

[carmusic]

dismantle your lcd and sell it on ebay you might get good price for it and buy a regular lcd monitor

 

[cr0sh]

One company that sells LCD interfaces for PCs (among other things):

**broken link removed**

Something else you might try to do is run the system headless, and remote desktop into the machine (RDP or VNC)...