before me sits a very nervous looking laptop

The reason it is nervous is after i robbed it of its hard drive and replaced it with a smaller one is the next thing is its screen is busted and a good friend wants a computer.

I plan on removing the top bit and binning it but i have been told that taking the cable for the display out gives some laptops serious not happy issues.

model is an IBM 390X

anyne know if i can kill the cable or is it duct tape time

I plan on removing the top bit and binning it but i have been told that taking the cable for the display out gives some laptops serious not happy issues.


From the little resarch I was able to do when I was seriously contemplating building a revolutionary new in-car computer to play MP3 files (Than God Hugo came along when he did and saved me from such utter madness!!) I think you will have considerable difficulty with this.

It is no trivial task mating a laptop computer to any display other than the one the manufacturer equipped it with, unless you actually have a video-out port on the computer itself. (I don't even know if any laptops actually have that...)

tanstaafl.

(I don't even know if any laptops actually have that...)

Actually, all of them do.

His concern is whether removing the LCD display will make the laptop unhappy, or will it boot normally and allow the VGA port to be used?

I've tried it before on a very old Zenith 386 notebook and it booted fine. It should work but the best thing to do is just try it.

The only problem I can think of is that, as a power savings, the external vid port might be shut off in the bios. On the other hand many laptops have [fn]function keys that switch the external port on, even if it's initially off.

it should work fine. I have a thinkpad 600E that I removed
the LCD from and just used it on an external monitor.

Just try it. Should be ok.