Mac Portable meets Dynamac: ELantern, adding an EL panel to a Portable

[techknight]

This is still VERY much a work in progress but, I figured I would do something fun.

I work on macintosh portable machines all the time, and as such, I have parts lying around in various nooks and crannies of this house lol. The other thing is, the macintosh portable is known to have bad LCDs now with excess ion buildup causing tunnel vision, image retention issues, and of course vinegar.

Outside of that, A dynamac (and an outbound) have been on my list for awhile but the likelihood of ever owning one, especially at a reasonable price is next to nill.

So. I'm going to make one out of scrap macintosh portable parts:

 

[techknight]

Here is a test setup. Using Androda's Portable to VGA adapter as my testbed along with a secondary device to drive the TFEL panel:

 

[techknight]

Isn't that just gorgeous? My test environment was a success, and I even like the inverted mode, it actually looks decent. Does it save on power? Nah not really. EL panels tend to increase current due to the amount of pixel transitions happening per row because of the capacitance of the panel itself.

 

[techknight]

With the success of my test setup, I need to move onto building the hardware itself. I have the board design done, and OUCH. Friggen JLC plus our current policy situation here in the USA is expensive.

 

[Froggy814]

Taxes! That's a lot of taxes! This is awesome! I will definetly be following this!

 

[techknight]

Taxes! That's a lot of taxes! This is awesome! I will definetly be following this!

Oh but it gets worse... My mouser cart:

I am never going to financially recover from this (In fact, i dont have the burnable cash at the moment, so ill have to put this off for now)

 

[techknight]

Well, I think the design will work alright, although the cables will be tight.

 

[Froggy814]

That is a very pricy endeavor! wow... Pricing is just a ripoff these days!

 

[campbellashe]

@Froggy814 and @techknight

Just jumping on this post for a general question....


Any luck with drop in replacements that would replace the LCD outright in the Portable with an equivalent -- the vinegar syndrome is a real problem and I have two non backlit machines impacted by it.

Therefore, I'm still looking for a drop in replacement for the LCD panel on the Portable. I've created a replacement that needs external battery and uses the REZA board for translation to HDMI. It is great but modern LCDs are power hungry; and it needs a separate battery to run it. I also don't know how to budget the watts to allow a modern equivalent that uses the original connector to power everything.....


Froggy I know you were working on a board of your own.

I guess I'm looking for the various parts to pull this off:
a) a board to take the OG signals from the logic board -- REZA's board -- got this part and perhaps there are others...I think this is what your board does ?
b) an LCD/ board that displays the 1 bit 640x400 image under available watt budget (I have not actually measured the limit, most modern ones I can only get to about 2.16 W budget as they all have backlights)

Part A is around in Reza's board and I think Froggy is working on a similar solution that is more slick, and is this yours as well
Part B is the hard part -- sourcing and LCD with low wattage -- don't know if e-ink or other solutions exist at the 10.1 inch size that would work... let alone modern equivalents that accept the 640x400.

Thanks for any direction....

 

[techknight]

Not quite the right thread for this, since this is about the EL project but.

It's not super difficult to pull it off, you need proper DC-DC converters that feed from the battery power, and yes, the power budget isnt there. Not even for this EL panel, but a lithium battery will hold the whole setup for a good long while, and whilte turned off, the original charger will charge it.

I used the REZA repository to base this design off of.

But LED backlights usually arent that expensive on power, it shouuuuld be alright.

eink would be IDEAL for this. But we are just now starting to see high framerate ink disaplys, and theyre still prohibitively expensive. In time, it may just be doable. it would also look close to original.

 

[campbellashe]

Sorry. Saw a “new” screen on a Portable and got excited….

 

[techknight]

Sorry. Saw a “new” screen on a Portable and got excited….

Well, at least the REZA repository in that case has everything you need to throw a screen in it. Kuldgy? yes. But it does work. Only option outside of that is to go full fledge FPGA and drive a panel directly. Then you still have to deal with backlight control and power.

I really want to investigate e-ink when the high speed high framerate displays get cheaper.

 

[Trash80toG4]

Now that you've mentioned FPGA . . . wottle has image position figured out.

How much trouble will it cause to use an inexpensive project board to throw your 640x400 Page buffer onto a larger panel inside the Luggable bezel constraints for a perfect fit?

edit: way cool project!