German Afternoons: Digital Picture Frame

So, a friend showed me this and this.

Of course, I had to make one. I had an old IBM 600E laying around (thanks Dad!) that would be a great candidate.

I dug the laptop out of the back room, and started getting it setup for this project. After about 10 minutes, the backlight went out of the screen. Great. Google helped me find this, and after about a week of waiting, I finally had a new backlight to install. These laptops were constructed by first laying the backlight on the table, and then building the entire laptop around it. It isn't really THAT bad, but it was a chore to get the old one out and the new one in.

With the laptop up and running, I was ready to move on. I decided that I wanted to keep the laptop as "whole" as possible, but wanted the package to be as compact as possible. So, I figured I would "flip" the screen so that it would be visible with the laptop lid closed. Since I already had the screen out for the CCFL replacement, I'd get down to the business of cutting the screen.

Here's a pic with the screen removed.

So, I needed a hole in the lid that was the same size as the one in the front bezel. I decided to use the front bezel as a template, and used a knife to scribe the dimensions for the hole into the lid. Here's a picture of that, too!

I used a jigsaw, a workbench, and some creative clamping to cut the hole in the top of the lid. I got really involved in that, and did not take pictures. But, here's a picture of the complete laptop, with the screen reversed. There was plenty of ribbon cable to accommodate flipping the screen. There was NOT, however, enough of the 2wire CCFL connection to flip the screen. I had to splice in a few inches of wire to make the connection.