Using a laptop monitor as external monitor

[kombuchakid]

I have cannibalised my old Dell for all the good bits and am left with the monitor. What I would like to do is to hook up my eeePc to the old monitor.
any ideas?

[MrMoo]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u..._multimon.mspx

[kombuchakid]

I´m now using linux, so this would probably not work for me. I was thinking more in terms of what cables to plug in as the Dell only has video out, and also no Hdd, just the cpu.

[MrMoo]

If it's a regular monitor with VGA/DVI/DisplayPort you just plug it in, however your title says an old laptop. An old laptop means it has to be capable of running and then you have to use some software over a network connection. With Windows you can use the MaxiVista software as linked, for Unix & Linux variants you need to use something like Xdmx:

Distributed multihead support with Linux and Xdmx

[kombuchakid]

Let me define running
I switch on the laptop and the screen says that it cant find hard disk-fi to retry and f2 or setup.
Now is there anyway to go from there to showing something more useful by plugging it in to a working netbook?

I had a look and your linux link and now my head hurts.
perhaps a summary from you?

[vmlinuz]

The short answer is: no, not really.

What MrMoo is suggesting is running the old laptop something like a thin client - booting a full OS on it, but then just running some remote display software to make it appear (virtually) as a second screen to the netbook. It's doable, but I'm not quite sure how easily, or how stable/robust things would be at the end. Best start would probably be booting it from a USB key, if you've already repurposed the hard drive

What I think you are asking for is a way to plug the screen from the old laptop into the netbook - which is effectively impossible, since the screen is not designed to be used like that and won't have anything like the necessary electronics.

[kombuchakid]

I liked the first part of your answer booting from the usb but not the 2nd part about bits missing - the main missing bit being a video in socket.
Guess I will have to dump a perfectly good screen

[jayinhongkong]

You can always sell it on eBay. People buy used laptop screens on there all the time.

[krypton]

If you insist on doing this is it possible (would take a bit of work).

1) Boot the laptop
You could use USB boot as suggested before or PXE (network) boot it from your eePC (since there is no HDD).

2) Setup a second system as an extended monitor.
- use xdmx (most direct way)
- use Xvnc on eePC and view on the laptop using vncviewer


Direct physical connection would not be possible without professional help. The laptop display typically only has its LVDS inputs and some circuits would need to be made to convert VGA/DVI/Svideo signals to LVDS.

[kombuchakid]

That is an absolutely brilliant idea, though I wonder if an 8 year old mon would be in much demand.
another idea offered was to run linux from a flash drive; it seems old P3 with 128mb memory can become young again once Win ME has been dumped