Cannibalizing a Tablet Screen for an External Touchscreen Display

[JDietrich07]

Hey all --

I have an old Toshiba Portege M400 that has all sorts of issues -- dead battery, failing hard drive, case damage... -- the sum total of which make it really not worth the effort and money to revive the computer to a workable state.

What I'm wondering is whether there's any way to cannibalize what's really the only quality part of the system that still works well -- the screen -- and do anything with it. Ideally, it would be an external touch screen display that I could plug in to my laptop and use on my desk. Getting the screen detached from the old laptop will be easy, but it's the doing something with it after that stage that's giving me trouble. There are a few major obstacles that I've identified and don't know what to do about:

1. Supplying power to the screen
2. Getting RGB input
3. Reading touchscreen input on the new computer

I did a fair bit of Googling, and couldn't find anything about doing this sort of thing. I'm not sure whether that means it's impossible, or just that nobody's ever happened to write a guide for it before.

Also, if there is a different place I should be starting this discussion, please point me in the right direction. I'm not too familiar with tech and hardware forums, so it's quite likely that I'm entirely in the wrong place.

Cheers!

Jeff

 

[heatlesssun]

I think the first problem you have is that the screen in the M400 is digital pen only, no touch.

 

[JDietrich07]

Yeah, I know. I'm fine with using the pen, I just want to detach the screen and use it as a monitor attached to another computer. Wondering if that's possible.

 

[heatlesssun]

Yeah, I've seen people do this with other Tablet PC screens but obviously you'll need the schematics for the pin layout. You should try Tabletpcreview.com, there are a lot of tablet guys over there that know their stuff.