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Anyone interested in a Hi-def (1920 x 1200) mod for PB/MBP?

david06 said:
Has anyone had any progress or tried anything else?
Click to expand...

Unfortunatly I don't have a MBP to try my panel on and haven't heard anything else from anyoner whom has been testing this. Any news guys?

Edit:

I have been playing around with DisplayConfigX - A registered copy and it does seem quite good at pushing unsupported resolutions etc.. even for the internal display and adds them to your display preferences. I suspect that if it was set up with the correct display settings it would work perfectly.

Okay so i've now managed to get my display to run at 50Hz refresh rather than 60Hz. After having a play around I managerd to install some resolutions and now in system prefs instead of saying N/A next to refresh I can pick between 50 and 60Hz. So in theory you guys should be able to drop yours down to 60Hz from 70. Anyone willing to try this out?
 
Ok... my suspension is over (crazy mods have a problem with non-zealots).

I'm going to try to use the boot option to set the frequency at 60Hz in a few days. If that doesn't work, I'll think about trying to register that program...
 
Just a little update on the progress of the screen upgrade.

David helped me out with DisplayConfig and I managed to install a 65Hz and 60Hz refresh rate for my normal 1440x900 display. It doesn't seem to want to run at 70Hz, so my guess is the default refresh is 65Hz.

I'll be home tomorrow and have time to stick the 1920x1200 screen in. I'll try running it at 60Hz and 50Hz and see what I can manage ;)
 
vv-tim said:
Just a little update on the progress of the screen upgrade.

David helped me out with DisplayConfig and I managed to install a 65Hz and 60Hz refresh rate for my normal 1440x900 display. It doesn't seem to want to run at 70Hz, so my guess is the default refresh is 65Hz.

I'll be home tomorrow and have time to stick the 1920x1200 screen in. I'll try running it at 60Hz and 50Hz and see what I can manage ;)
Click to expand...

Sounds good. Just a couple of pointers although I'm sure you probably don't need them. Best thing to do is use an external display so if things are going south at least you can see what you are doing. You might also want to install a few extra res's just in case. Check some earlier postings to find the list of compatible res's. I tried 1680 x 1050 and that does not work. But if you can at least get one res going properly we may be ablre to work from there. Oh and when using an external you might want to set that to main display with menu bar etc... before you put the new panel in.

Good luck - I can't wait to hear the result.

I'm waiting with bated breath so I can then order a MBP.
 
Here's an update for everyone.

I got it working at 1920x1200 @ 60Hz. Now, before you jump out of your pants with excitement... the bad news.

There are MAJOR color issues. It will only seem to properly run at 60Hz and I haven't managed to get DisplayConfigX to allow me any higher refresh than that. It looks like it's using some kind of rdiculous color pallete.

I'm actually typing this in Mac OS X, but text is grainy, the background (the default blue one) is yellow/brown red, purple, green, blue, and aqua.

I really have no idea what's wrong. At this point it seems that the refresh rate is proper. 1920x1200 looks beautiful... but without proper coloring, it's pretty much useless :( If you switch between color profiles sometimes the yellows will change to another color and whatnot, but yeah... that didn't help.
 
Ok, back with my old screen again.

I think we've reached the point at which EFI is messing with the display. I'm 99% sure of this.

When EFI decides on updating whatever settings (which happens when you enter System Preferences) it messes up the colors. This is my assumption because rebooting into Windows yields the horrible color-ness as well. If you reset the PRAM and boot into Windows without going into Mac OS X, your colors are fine.

So we've accomplished on thing... we got the refresh rate working. 1920x1200 WILL work with DisplayConfiguratorX or whatever. However, now we must somehow get past this EFI issue. I still haven't finished downloading the "pirate" copy of OS X, but I'm working on it. Maybe the fake video drivers will help me out.
 
Skeeball236 said:
Just catching up on this thread, very interesting...kudos to all....now,



Did you guys scroll down on that page and see this information on vendor codes?



I broke it up into paragraphs so it's easier to read, but it sounds like a possible solution.
Click to expand...

Looks like it could be some useful information there. I'm going to look into it tomorrow. The problem right now is, I can't find what the vendor code is for the default screen because DisplayConfiguratorX is installed, haha. So I guess I'd need to uninstall it, then find the codes for each screen, then reinstall it to get the frequency settings right =x
 
Awesome work guys, I'm enjoying the progress. Even though I don't own a Macbook or Pro! Maybe I should try this, I am a Systems Engineer specializing in Robotics/Electrical...hmmm...I'll see what my next paycheque brings! Then hopefully I can help you guys or you guys help me :D
 
Well, my laptop remains in is franken-book-not-quite-working state. I've had rEFIt installed all along (I suppose I failed to make that clear in my earlier posts; I've had my 'book set up like this for so long that I take it for granted) but the 1920x1200 toshiba LCD works great in windows, and the rEFIt bootloader, and even the OS X grey-apple boot screen, but after that, it's totally useless.

vv-tim, it seems we were having similar problems. I tried using DisplayConfigX, but it wouldn't allow me to set the nitty-gritty timing junk to the settings windows used, it kept changing numbers on me forcefully. SwitchResX allowed me to, but it has seemed rather useless (i.e. it hasn't worked). Were you able to set the display timing settings (all that direct pinout stuff, front porch and sync width for vert/horz timings, etc. etc.) properly with DisplayConfigX, or was it a kind of 'close as I could' job? I'm intrigued by you success after reducing the refresh rate. I'll need to experiment more in that regard.

Regardless, it IS possible, if windows and the bootloader and even the initial boot screen of OS X can do it. Some little bugger of a gremlin in OS X is changing something it shouldn't at some point. Replacing the vendor files as posted prior seems promising, I'm going to look into that soon. I'll post my results, assuming I can get any sort of image to appear if I can duplicate vv-tim's impressive hacking feats.


The dream of absurdly high-res MBPs continues...let's make it a reality!


Also, it seems like this deserves a more centralized and accessable format than a lonely forum topic that a stumbled upon through luck on google. I've been considering rehosting this topic as an open blog (sort of like a wiki, except in a post-by-post format) so everyone can easily add their experiences and hopefully pool their knowledge into a general solutiuon. I'm sure I could get it linked to on engadget.com, hackaday.com, etc. etc. for increased traffic. Opinions?
 
Just a dumb question from ....

... a user.

Hi col22!

Are you actually installing a new (vhr) screen into the MBP housing??? Very interesting for 17" MBP users? And maybe APPLE itself. The PMB 17" model could be much more useful for pros if this works.... Especially if (and when) the Merom is out, incl. the 800MHz frontside bus, and maybe space for 4GB RAM.... I know there are people out there who would definitey pay the price for a SuperMBP.

Thanks for your efforts (even though I do not understand the tech part.:p )

:D
 
I'm not dead yet, just been away from home a lot and haven't had the chance to do the vendor-file testing yet.
 
I'm still here too.

I haven't had much to contribuite however as I don't currently own a MBP. Donations? Anyone? Didn't think so. My screen is working fine except I have a couple of issues. First I got a pretty cheap B grade panel (though it wasn't advertised as such) It's got this line (more like a thick bar) of pixels that take a few minutes to start to work properly - it work perfectly after that however.

I have had a quick play around with the vendor stuff but cannot find the required numbers and am unsure where they got that info from. Maybe they were running Panter and is not included/located differently to Tiger? I'm not sure - will look into this in more depth. Why? Because my backlight/brightness adjustment doesn't work and there was mention of this in the vendor info - so will try getting this working. I'll post more results once I have them.
 
Skeeball236 said:
^^it's in tiger

open profile, then you need to scroll down those weird codes, and choose model (it's near the bottom)
Click to expand...
that worked a treat. i now have brightness adjustment for my display. i should have noticed that the info is shown in displayconfigx. i have lost a few resolutions however i still have 1920 x 1200. vv-tim can you take a photo of your screen acting up?
 
I hope you guys keep working on this. I would switch to a mac today, if it had a high resolution laptop screen. After using a 1900x1200 screen for two years, I was switched to a 1024x768 system for work. The horror! Combine that with the 250 active megs of running "applications" required to "use" the laptops built in features which don't work very well, and it is time to move on.

The base mb and mbp are ok, but its just not enough for me to spend the money on just yet.


Scot
 
I'm not dead yet, no updates so far though. I'm moving into college today, so hopefully I'll have some free time again soon.
 
Love this topic... is one of the most usefuls I've read!!

Congrats you guys. Maybe I'll tryit one day. But I guess I'll go with the external HD monitor... =)
 
I walked by the apple store today. Dag gummit... I so want a white macbook pro with 1920x1080 or higher screen and a decent video card. (Yes, I know it doesn't exist)

Good luck on the modding, I am definitely still paying attention, and still considering giving this a shot in a few months after the merom version comes out (whenever that might be).

Have you tried the leopard wwdc OS yet? That might have the right video processing to understand the new screen.

Scot
 
tarjan said:
I walked by the apple store today. Dag gummit... I so want a white macbook pro with 1920x1080 or higher screen and a decent video card. (Yes, I know it doesn't exist)

Good luck on the modding, I am definitely still paying attention, and still considering giving this a shot in a few months after the merom version comes out (whenever that might be).

Have you tried the leopard wwdc OS yet? That might have the right video processing to understand the new screen.

Scot
Click to expand...

Thats a very good point Scot - I hadn't even thought about whether the DP could help us out with this particular mod.

I'm still hoping for some pictures of the offending item at work. I'd like to see what it is actually doing which may help in figuring out where the problem lies.

Changing the vendor ID's/Colorsync handling of the display may work but It really didn't change much on mine except enable brightness control. But I'm sure we can work it out - It's just difficult when no-one is able or has the time to actually work on it.
 
I'm confused about one thing... it looks like none of the LG panels work easily with the MBP, but is there any (exact) model of Toshiba panel that will work without reconfiguration?
 
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