Funny I found this today researching about doing the same sort of idea to my DFI MediaBook (NanTan 9200).
Anyway, I make NO claim to be an electronics expert. That said, I love tinkering with electronics and one of the reasons I play with old PC's like these...is because it's fun to see what I can do to bring them "up to speed". Yes, this will be one of my walls of text.
I've also been messing about a bit with upgrading a NanTan 9200 DFI MediaBook to TFT or at least DTSN. So I'll dump what I have so far here - might apply to Satellites.....I'm planning to put all this on my site once I'm done parsing everything and getting more pinouts from different panels from various laptops. There's a lot of 486 and 386 machines out there that I feel could possibly be at least hacked, if not legitimatley outfitted with some kind of TFT Color panel - at least anything with later chipsets that were liked up to a TFT.
I found this pinout chart here: https://www.instructables.com/Salvaging-Liqui … -Displays-LCDs/ - I spent hours looking for a Datasheet for the Casio MD820TT00-C1 found in the DFI and came up empty handed, but looking at photos on e-bay, I noticed most STN Monochrome Laptop displays have the same pinout of 14-16 pins, depending on if the CFLs are powered by an on-board ballast board or a separate one like my DFI does.
Quick and Dirty Version of STN Mono Pinout per the site above
1 - Ground
2 - +3 or +5 Volts
3 - Contrast Adjustment
4 - Register Select Signal (RS)
5 - Read/Write Select Signal (Low = Read, High = Write)
6 - Enable Panel Signal
7 - Data 0
8 - Data 1
9 - Data 2
10 - Data 3
11 - Data 4
12 - Data 5
13 - Data 6
14 - Data 7
15 - Backlight Anode (optional)
16 - Backlight Cathode (optional)
Now, what this means is you can't just simply slap on a color panel and have it work. But......
I own four NEC Versa Laptops (40EC, V/50, M/75, and P/75) - ALL Active Matrix - and one DFI MediaBook (NanTan FMAK9200) - STN Monochrome and likely a similar pinout sans pins 15 & 16- and a common thread I Found between these two is that the wiring that comes off the motherboard/connector board (the part on the detachable screen Versas that attaches the screen to the motherboard), is that they BOTH have 3-wire connectors going to the screen's controller boards to the screen assembly. The connectors for the Versa darn-near almost match the ones for the DFI.
On the Versas - There are 34 pins total across 3 connectors for the TFT Active Matrix Panels (NL6448AC30-03/06/10, NL6448AC30-09 - which is a special case - I'll get to in a moment, and the NL8060AC24-01 which is the 800x600 panel used in the M/75 and P/75HC models). These laptops (save for the Versa V series) had detachable screens that could be swapped with STN Monochrome, DTSN Color, and Active Matrix TFT - with later models being capable of using higher resolution panels as an extra multiplexer chip with capacitor was wired into the connector board. The special case was the VErsa M/75TC and M/100TC (PC-570/580) - which used a special controller board (the M/75's had interchangeable LCD Controller boards on the system planar), and used a special True-Color panel with slightly different wiring but it still had 3 connectors. The panel had extended logic for the higher color range built in. This means that the RAW signals were coming off the Versa boards from the C&T/WD chipsets - and then being sent to the screen, where the signal was handled with the on-board electronics. I took another look at Beige-O-Vision's video on the V/50 he tore apart - which had DTSN Color - and I saw that the Kyocera panel in his V/50 had a larger control board on the right side of the panel - did not get a good look at the wiring harness though - but I See it's the same single connector on the Versa base-unit side as my V/50C which has an active matrix NL6448AC30-10 panel.
On the DFI - the three connectors attach to the motherboard and run through the hinges - and connect to a special circuit board that seems to "reduce" the signal down to something the Casio panel understands, which has only 14 wires, as well as provides power to the board for several chokes and a Ballast transformer that powers the CFL backlight.
Now, talking TFT signals vs. STN Signals - STN, DTSN, and TFT seem to share the same signals for power and data enable, though TFTs tend to have extended functions. The NEC Panels are well documented and have a good sheet - and the NL6448AC30-03 is compatible with the 06 and 10 models - I know because I've switched these out (you can also upgrade the M and P models to 800x600 if they were original 640p by adding a 500K resistor to the connector board, or removing it to go back to 640x480). IT seems TFTs tend to use raw-signals off the motherboard, doing the work themselves, while STN and DTSN tend to use a separate ballast/control/reducer circuit of some kind to allow for the screen to manage a reduced amount of data lines.
The NLxxxxxx panels I listed all have three connectors: the first a 10 pin containing Clock, 3 grounds, Horizontal and Vertical sync lines, and the Red Data, a 13 pin containing more grounds, Ac Adapter in, Backlight on/off, and the data lines for Green and Blue, and a 11 pin used for backlight power, data enable, mode, vcc on/off, logic power, and of course, more grounding lines. Basically the pinout is
CN1
1 - CLK
2 - GND
3 - GND
4 - Hsync
5 - Vsync
6 - GND
7 - Red Data 0 (LSB - Left Side Bus?)
8 - Red Data 1
9 - Red Data 2
10 - Red Data 3 (RSB - Right Side Bus?)
CN2
1 - GND
2 - Green Data 0 (LSB)
3 - Green Data 1
4 - Green Data 2
5 - Green Data 3 (RSB)
6 - GND
7 - Blue Data 0 (LSB)
8 - Blue Data 1
9 - Blue Data 2
10 - Blue Data 3 (LSB)
11 - Ground
12 - AC Adapter In
13 - Backlight On/Off
CN3 - 11 Pin
1 - GND
2 - VCC - Voltage, Logic
3 - VDD - Voltage, Backlight Circuit
4 - VDD - Voltage, Backlight (2nd for 03/06)
5 - NC
6 - GND B - Backlight Ground
7 - GND B - Backlight Ground
8 - Data Enable
9 - Mode
10 - VCC power Off (power saving?)
11 - GND
So as we can see - ALL the voltages are self contained on these NEC Panels - now I know this thread is not about NEC - but hopefully this will help trace down what can done as IBM, Toshiba, Compaq, and any other laptop computer uses the same wiring, principles, and general lines. Honestly, I wish I had an oscilloscope so I Could capture the data/waveforms off the connectors and possibly come up with a way to reverse engineer my DFI using those as a guide - as the DFI has more connectors (likely just more grounds).
And the idea/hypothesis that I have that the TFT signals come raw off the chip is further supported by the position of the graphics controller chip on both laptops. The NEC's have the same connector in roughly the same place on ALL models from the original Ultralite PC-400 20MHz all the way to the P/75 - just different chips, but they use the same data lines and it seems there's not more than filtering and possibly some resistance added before they go to the screen connector plug.
I also found the pinout to another LCD Panel - this time DTSN - to get an idea what the data/power/control structure of these panels would be compared to the other two. Most of these old Laptops use industrial LCD panels (shame they're so expensive) - the NEC NL-series panels are used in other things than just Versa Laptops (expecially the NL6448AC30-12 which seems to use a standard connector similar to many TFT panels I've looked at, and appears to also require a separate ballast connector for the CFLs).
SHARP LM64C031
640x480 9.4" LCD Single Scan STN
CN1 - 18 pin
1 - Startup
2 - Latch Data
3 - Lower Data Clock
4 - Upper Data Clock
5 - NC
6 - Power SUpply, Logica & LCD +5v
7 - Ground
8 - Power Supply for LCD
9 - Ground
10 - Data 0
11 - Data 1
12 - Data 2
13 - Data 3
14 - Data 4
15 - Data 5
16 - Data 6
17 - Data 7
18 - Ground
CN2 - 6 pin for CCFL
1 - High Voltage Line for CCFL (From Inverter)
2 - nc
3 - GND
4 - GND
5 - NC
6 - Hight Voltage Line (From Inverter)
Being passive matrix, looks like it uses similar data structure (8-bit) to the STN Monochrome panel, with the additional lines for Latch, separate data clocks for lower and upper (Thoguh that could just be another term for the Register Select), and a few more grounds.
Hopefully this is helpful information - this is what I have so far.
