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Party-Box...Countertop cab w/ laptop & flat screen
bishmasterb:
coder,
Great project!
Couple of questions for you:
1) Sorry if you covered this and I missed it; why did you decide to use a 15" external LCD monitor instead of the LCD panel in the laptop?
2) The metal dimples that you used to transfer the location of the dowel holes to the opposite side and cross members, what are those called and where did you get them? I typically use a template to transfer the dowel hole locations, but those would come in handy as well.
thanks
infiniteomega:
I can't answer for him but the main reasons *I* would use an external monitor over a laptop's are that a) response time b) contrast c) resolution. That laptop looks as though it's pretty old, and as such, it has an older lcd. The response time on those is high to the point where moving images cause a blurring effect that is just nasty for gaming. Besides that, the laptop lcd probably has a much poorer contrast ratio compared to the new 15" he got. And then there's the resolution issue. The laptop lcd may have a much higher resolution than the new 15" making the games that much more stretched and pixelated.
Thinking about it, it may also be an issue of image adjustability. Can't really adjust laptop lcd monitors manually. That may also be part of the equation. Not sure if that's what coder has going on, but that's what I think of when comparing laptop vs desktop lcd.
Timoe:
--- Quote from: bishmasterb on June 02, 2006, 11:49:38 am ---
2) The metal dimples that you used to transfer the location of the dowel holes to the opposite side and cross members, what are those called and where did you get them? I typically use a template to transfer the dowel hole locations, but those would come in handy as well.
--- End quote ---
You can get those dowel jobs at any big hardware store, Home Depot, etc. In the hardware section they might sell bags of dowels and in that same section they will have those metal markers for all the standard dowel sizes.
theCoder:
--- Quote from: bishmasterb on June 02, 2006, 11:49:38 am ---coder,
Great project!
Couple of questions for you:
1) Sorry if you covered this and I missed it; why did you decide to use a 15" external LCD monitor instead of the LCD panel in the laptop?
2) The metal dimples that you used to transfer the location of the dowel holes to the opposite side and cross members, what are those called and where did you get them? I typically use a template to transfer the dowel hole locations, but those would come in handy as well.
thanks
--- End quote ---
1) Monitor - I really wanted to go with the laptop monitor. I've already got it and it is light. I went with the external one for 3 reasons. The primary one is the image quality. The LCD just looked better. This may have just been a contrast setting or something, but that was my perception. It is also about 1" bigger. And finally I really didn't want to deal with cutting and soldering the micro-wires connecting the screen to the motherboard. I hacked into a similar cable once and it was filled with funky nylon covered in copper foil. Needless to say it was hard to solder.
2) Metal Dimples - They are called dowel centers. I didn't have to buy them, my friend had three sets of different sizes. I found a site with them at: http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=9978
They charge $5 for a pack of 8. According to Timoe you can pick them up at your local hardware store.
bishmasterb:
1) Understand about the image quality. As far as soldering though, I've done a couple of bartops with laptops, and in both cases I simply used the existing cable/LCD panel and placed the panel on the back of the notebook. The picture below shows this, although it's a little hard to tell, the lcd panel is simply velcro'd to the back of the laptop.
2) Thanks for posting your progress with these. I've tried to mickey mouse something like those before, I didn't know things were made specifically for that purpose!
Looking forward to seeing the progress on your cab.
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