Things to do with a broken LCD
So you broke your screen, might as well enjoy whats left of it, right? It's actually some amazing technology inside of there and I strongly recommend that you open it up and take a look. You'll gain more of an understanding about it works.
While you have your powerbook opened up one of the neat things you can do is color your apple. Mine is green now, and is colored on the inside. The white apple is a diffuser panel that's made of the same material as the diffuser in the layer above the backlight in the LCD display and is really receptive to ink. Take the pigment of your choice and color the inside, looks pretty sweet. If you wanted to, you could use an inkjet to actually print something on there (what i SHOULD have done) .
Also, if you take apart the LCD panel it looks pretty cool. The TFT Active matrix LCD panel in the 12" powerbooks is made of a backlight, diffuser panel, thin film transistor, two layers of polarized glass set at perpendicular angles with liquid crystal in between the layers (which forms a helix that allows light to pass through unless current is applied), a layer that's made of this tiny grid painted black (to give more contrast and to block inactive areas of the pixels), and a layer of RGB painted arrays to make the display in color.
Have you ever looked out the window with your powerbook in front of it with the brightness turned way down? You'll notice that you can see a perfect image of the display even without the backlight on. That's because the LCDs don't create light, they just block light that's transmitted by the backlight. There are thin film transistors and tiny capacitors in the LCD that temporarly holds little bits of voltage that is pulsed to the liquid crystal that tell the helix whether to bend or stay staight. The voltage can be adjusted which is why you can experience tones on your display.
Unfortunately, you can't really use your display outdoors except viewing through that little apple. However, if you remove your LCD from the frame and hold it up to the window (even with the brightness OFF) you can see a perfect picture (it's not 100% accurate with color tho, because the temperature of light is not as consistant and controlled as the flourescent backlamp). If I had money to piss away I'd buy another PowerBook and cut the back of the display out so it could be removed -for outdoor usage. It would be a much better solution than this (
http://www.hoodmanusa.com/)
If you peel apart the layer with the two polarizing filters filled with liquid crystal (they are glued together) you can do neat things with the filter. Hold them at perpendicular angles and amazingly - they block ALL light. It's shockingly cool. If you hold one up to the window, you'll be able to see clear through the window without ANY glare but without it being darker like sunglasses do (it's polarized light!). Also, very cool.
The backlight is still useful even if your display is cracked. It gives a relaxing blueish tint. If you have access to a nice printer you can print on some transparent vinyl and install the backlight behind it and hook a battery up for a portable glowing display like you see on fast food menus.
Be careful when playing around with LCDs tho, they contain mercury.
-ryan
