Integrating BS2 with laptop

Pierson

Hi,

I've got an old laptop and an idea. I have an old laptop I want to use for input and output to a BS2. Iwant to gut the motherboard, and use·my·BS2 as the CPU.·I've seen the EZKey and EZMouse products, and I think they would be useful. Has anyone hooked up a BS2 to an LCD display (800x600)?

Thanks Pierson

Gadgetman

You can forget about using the laptop's LCD.

You see, the chips along the edges of the the LCD ARE driver chips, but they do not contain any memory.
One row of the chips are 'Row select' chips, and the other is the 'Column select' chips. The processor/graphics card must periodically cycle trhoug EVERY Row and Column address(using a fast clock pulse) and sending a bit-pattern for the dot addressed by the active Row/Column. And yes, that means building the entire screen image in RAM. A 640x480 B/W image is almost 30KB in size. a 800x600 is nearly 48KB.

Slightly more memory than a BS2 has...

You may want to look for a simple Graphical LCD with an onboard controller, and place that where the laptop's LCD was.
(you may want to add a bit of filler around the edges, though... )

The mouse shouldn't be a problem, but the keyboard...
That will only work if it has a detatchable keyboard with a PS/2 style plug.
All others have custom controllers built into the motherboard.
(Compaq had some like that, and a few others, too)

Now, the really GOOD part of the idea is that the laptop has a built-in battery and charger
(Of course the battery is probably dead, but if it's Ni-Cad, it shouldn't be too difficult to rebuild)

Which laptop are you planning on using, anyway?

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Don't visit my new website...

RinksCustoms

I've got two older gateways that i picked up for $25 and figured i could convert the LCDs for composite video (a Monitor), seems easier to get a worm to play poker, or a frog to fly a plane than it is to figure out how to convert an LCD from a laptop to a monitor. But I keep my hopes up, as i see the propeller chip HAS multi-video capability incl. brodcast/baseband composite video, AND VGA output!

Cheeto

You should take the LCD panel apart and check the part number on the back, if you google it you might get a data sheet. It won't be as easy as just hooking a VGA connector to the wires comming out the LCD

Pierson

Thanks for the replies. The laptop is a NEC Versa, no USB ports. I'll take the cover off and see what's in it.

Pierson

I got a response from Multilabs, producers of the ezKey, ezMouse, and ezVid controllers. Here's their response:

"Interesting... I would start with seeing if the LCD module is a standard VGA screen. I assumed it would be with a regular VGA controller chip on the motherboard. If you can find the VGA wires or connector you might have a chance. There are some chips and devices on the market that can be used to convert NTSC to VGA and vise-versa. If the LCD does have a standard VGA input you can use an NTSC to VGA converter to hook the ezVID up to the LCD screen.

"Likewise, if the keyboard is a PS/2 device and you can find its connector you can use one of our ezKEYs to communicate with it. If the keyboard/laptop is an older device (before the days of USB keyboards) there is a good chance it would use the PS/2 protocol. Its finding the connectors on the motherboard and determining which pin is which that would take the most work.

"Hope this helps to get things started. Let me know what you find."

Does anyone have any suggestions for products that convert NTSC format to VGA? The ezVid only puts out an NTSC signal, that's the reason for the converter.

RinksCustoms

lol, the easiest way to convert NTSC to VGA is to use a device called a video capture card in a pc and then use it to put out VGA via the monitor output. As i read more and more documentation on the propeller, i think you could make a converter with a single propeller chip running at high speed to process an NTSC signal (breaking down the separate lines of horizontal and vertical sync) processing them, and outputting them via the propeller chips VGA output. This mgiht require some tricky coding though.

I forgot about googling the part #'s, it works most of the time.