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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
happy to start a new day and clear my desk, going "enough silly keyboard projects. time to start work on a whole new project, one that's not a keyboard! step 1: get the monitor working step 2: make a keyboar-FUCK!"
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
now here's the question: did my new LVDS Controller Board break or did my display break? because I'm gonna have to replace one or the other.
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
so now the question is: do I find another panel/controller? or do I just find a full replacement monitor, one that natively supports the connections my controller uses?
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
ahh yes, this is what's known in the industry as "completely fucked" (warning: flashing lights)
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
and it had this little LED driver in the casing. I'm wondering if maybe this is bad? that might explain why it's flashing on and off a bunch.
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
so lets pivot to a "teardown", which isn't really what I'm doing because it's already in one piece. This is the VSDISPLAY VSSP011 LVDs Controller Board
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
it drives an inverter, there's an unpopulated "main power" connector, then an IR connector (this one didn't come with an IR board or remote)
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
Along the long side, there's a connector for the controls board, the 30-pin LVDS connector, then a 6-pin jumper block for setting backlight voltage
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
the other end has a 4-pin speaker connector, and what looks like a model number: M.NT68676.3
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
So the main chip is a Novatek NT68676UFG. I can't find a specific datasheet for that, but based on the other things in that series it's a scaler chip designed for integrating into monitors. it takes in the usual VGA/DVI/HDMI and outputs LVDS.
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
other chips: a GD25Q40CTIG That's a 512 kilobyte SPI flash chip. Probably used for things like EDID and saved display configurations
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
also it turns out this is slightly the wrong board. This is a 1280x1024 board, and this is a 1280x960 display. But while looking into that, I found this: someone on amazon explaining how to fix the "white screen of death". INTERESTING
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
well I tried several other resolutions and got nothing useful. I think the display is broken in more ways than one
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
so I found an alternative source of video for the panel and HEY LOOK IT WORKS PERFECTLY
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
so a second controller has been purchased. with the right resolution and hopefully at least 20% less broken
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foone🏳️‍⚧️
@Foone
10$ says when the new one arrives, it's exactly the same board, just with a different file loaded onto that flash chip
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