Attach a digital photo frame to a vga monitor?

[DaOld Man]

Is this possible? I want the frame to display on the monitor, NOT the frame to be used as a pc monitor.

[lilshawn]

Is this possible? I want the frame to display on the monitor, NOT the frame to be used as a pc monitor.

wut? 

like the output that would normally display on the digital photo frame to instead display on the monitor?

windows has a myphotos screensaver built into it. 

[Gray_Area]

What would you want this for?

[MonMotha]

In general, no, you can't do this without a fair bit of (relatively complicated) hardware.  The interface to most of those small LCDs is TTL RGB (digital), while a VGA monitor will need analog input, so you need a DAC.  Video DACs are relatively complex, high speed devices in high pin-count packages - you can't breadboard this.

If you just have a larger PC LCD monitor, while it probably has a digital input (DVI or HDMI), the format is again not correct.  TTL RGB is a parallel transfer arrangement, while DVI/HDMI use a serialized arrangement.  Again, the circuitry to convert them is non-trivial.

[DrArcade]

Is this possible? I want the frame to display on the monitor, NOT the frame to be used as a pc monitor.

If you are wanting to use the slideshow feature, memory reader features of the picture frame, and just have the output display on a VGA monitor, you'll neee to unhook the LCD display, and use an RGB to VGA converter box and likely cobble together some sort of flat ribbon to VGA connector cable together.
Something similar to this http://www.blackbox.com/Store/Detail.aspx/VGA-to-RGB-Converter/AC312A although I'm not sure this is bidirectional.

Dr Arcade

[DaOld Man]

What would you want this for?

I would like to develop (something) that would display a video or still picture on the monitor until the PC completely boots up. After the front end (Mala, etc) is up, a signal from the pc would switch the vga monitor back to the PC.
I was thinking a photo frame MIGHT be the way to do this.
As for the vga switch, i was thinking of using some quad bilateral switch chips to do that.
I think it would be neat to show a short video or something other than the bios and windows boot screens.
(I know I can hide windows, but how can you hide the bios screen too?)
(WAI # 235)

[MonMotha]

I have yet to see an arcade game that really bothers trying to hide the fact that its PC based.  The best I've ever seen is replacing some splash screens and hiding the OS startup (usually Linux - Windows is too much of a pain), and even that's uncommon.  Most just show EVERYTHING, including the inevitable command prompt window that runs all the startup scripts.

It would be much easier to just show a blank screen until you are ready to show something else.  I've worked with a Playstation 2 based arcade platform that did that (no joke - it was literally a PS2 in a box with an IO board) in order to hide the startup graphics and sounds.  Of course, it makes troubleshooting the system fun since, unless you bypass that, you have no idea if things are broken or if the system is just "booting" for about the first minute or so.

FWIW, you can hide most BIOS startup screens.  The process varies with what motherboard/system you have.  Many offer a "splash screen" option, and you can often, through the use of some arcane special tools that might just brick your computer if you use them wrong, make that splash screen be whatever you want, including blank.  You can also relatively easily change the startup splash of Windows.  Hiding the initial login process ("Windows is applying your personal settings" and such) is a lot harder, but apparently it can be done if you hate yourself enough (and/or really enjoy regedit).  From there, you can do whatever.

The "cleanest" PC based arcade bootup I've seen is Pump It Up.  They show all the BIOS text, but they have their own bootloader, and they completely hide the OS (which is Linux) startup messages.  It also boots to completely playable in about 15-25 seconds, which is none to shabby.

[DaOld Man]

Yes, I have thought about killing the video until the frontend boots up, it wouldnt be hard to do, and you would have to include some type of switch to disable the function for troubleshooting.
But it would be neat to show a video while waiting for the PC to get up to speed.

[lilshawn]

I've done some installations of winxp pro sp2 on newer dual core amd processors (AM3 3ghz, 2gb ram, and SATA3 drives). Boot times where pretty fast. The windows logo (has the blue progress bar that cycles as it starts) has barely enough time to cycle 2x before the desktop comes up. whole schmozzle starts up from dead off and boots to our jukebox program in about 20 seconds.

...and i never bothered to streamline the installation at all. I'm half tempted to load one with tinyxp next time i need a new computer to see what the boot time there would be. i know my tinyxp install on my old amd64 2 ghz with 1gb ram was only about 30 or 40 seconds.

[capsule]

You could also use a small SSD as your system disk to shorten the boot time...

[GIZMOGAMES]

So what you want to do is

switch power on loading the memory card to autoplay through the pictureframe with its general output showing on the main lcd until the comp boots into mala at which point video stops switches off ??
At a guess using a usb /dvd player might be easier if one has an av out aswell
similar to THIS
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hyundai-P902-Region-Swivel-Portable/dp/B001G5ZHQK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337526650&sr=8-1


only problem then is how do you control it :S

[DaOld Man]

...only problem then is how do you control it :S

Controlling should be fairly easy, just use a relay or cd4066 bilateral switch to switch the monitor between the two inputs (PC and other source).
The switch would be triggered by mala with my idea is firing a bat file from a mala plugin at mala start. The bat file would turn switch on (or off), through either parallel or serial port.

I was thinking a digital photo frame because of its simplicity and low power usage, since it would still be running the whole time the cab is on.

I cant find any sort of video generator on the web that would serve this purpose, but it could be simply playing a video loop.

[Gray_Area]

...........................um....................

What I do for the bios and win boot screens is plug in a PCI video card, select it as primary display in the bios, and have my monitor connected to my AGP/PCIe card. (You may also need to differentiate your displays in Win display properties.) You can do the same with onboard video (treat as PCI), if you have it.

For OS, I use Instant Sheller.

I see nothing until my FE loads.