Thinkpads Forum

I am building a custom Cintiq (a la bongofish.com) and it will be a non-destructive build with a custom enclosure ( a la tabletmod.com). Basically it will be a sleeve with a LCD panel fitted in, and the tablet sliding in right undernearth the display, still allowing the pen access to the inductive field around the tablet. The other bits such as the LCD controller and power inverter for the CCFL will placed around the LCD panel instead of underneath it.

I am using an Intuos3 9x12, which has the same active area dimensions as a 15" display. The obvious choice is a 15" LCD, but being a person concerned with color accuracy, it's been hard to find a good LCD at a good price. The Eizo displays seem overpriced even for an IPS. I'm not willing to spend $1300 on a 1024x768 display, with only slightly above average color (It's not a true 24-bit display).

So I've been looking around at LCD displays, and found out the Lenovo Thinkpads had actually used IPS displays at one point (I'm not sure if they still do - I'm usually not that concerned with my laptop display since I mainly do digital illustration at home). Anyway, I decided to build a display using a generic LCD controller and one of these Thinkpad displays, but it's been quite hard to discern whether some of these displays are legit. I've found a couple I believe are real and at good prices, but then there are some which seem suspicious and some that are obviously not what they seem.

Here are the displays I've found:

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-A30p-A31p-LCD-1 ... 500wt_1154

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 641wt_1137

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-LENOVO-T60-T60p ... 378wt_1137

http://cgi.ebay.com/HV150UX1-100-15-UXG ... 133wt_1137

The last two seem the most suspicious. The other ones were still in their enclosures and seemed scavenged, though they could have just installed fake displays into real enclosures. The last two only show stickers which don't really tell me anything. If I could find datasheets for the HV150UX1-100 and compare the rear panel layout with one of the pictures then I could determine if it was legit. Or at least I believe that would solve my problem. Does anyone have the datasheets on any of these models?

I don't know if this will be much help to you, but I bought a t60p motherboard from ithinker (the 3rd one). Everything turned out fine, but they don't seem to update their information, so there were lots of emails to make sure that I was buying the correct product - so it's good to do some ground work yourself beforehand (..and that goes for most ebay listings...). One thing I can vouch for in my case, is that they are very good with communication and I would use them again (or the marketforum on this site).

I would suggest emailing them and asking if you have no luck on the marketforum.

The second seller (thinkpadheaven) is personally known to me, and is also an outstanding, highly respected member of this TP forum (with a different name here).
You can buy anything from him without second thoughts!

FYI: If your base mobo is from a T60 or T61, you will need a specific T6x LCD, with an EDID chip on it.
Without this chip, they wont work. The chip may have to be reprogrammed, if it originates from other brand laptops.

Boe Hydis HV150UX1 specsheet: http://beyondinfinite.com/lcd/Library/H ... X1-101.pdf