General Computer Thread

[John Clark]

Has anyone here had success with decapitation of a laptop with broken screen using just the base with external monitor?

Any pros and cons?

Not personally - but my dad did with an old acer (which seeing as it's been mentioned earlier, came with vista but probably has win7 now). Might also have done it with a dell d820

Pros - you can carry on using it, and with a larger screen (Resolution may be an issue)
Cons - it ain't as portable

As for me, I was able to get a replacement screen for mine and my father and I fixed it. He didn't get around to with the D820 (I'm not sure why he never bothered with the acer

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

Not personally - but my dad did with an old acer (which seeing as it's been mentioned earlier, came with vista but probably has win7 now). Might also have done it with a dell d820

Pros - you can carry on using it, and with a larger screen (Resolution may be an issue)
Cons - it ain't as portable

As for me, I was able to get a replacement screen for mine and my father and I fixed it. He didn't get around to with the D820 (I'm not sure why he never bothered with the acer

Mine is an Asus which is nearly 3 years old and screen is glitching. Sometimes it is good other times not. But on an external screen it behaves well. That's why I wish to try this.

The other quirk with this machine is the screen is 1080p at 100% without magnification but oddly using my regular external monitor with the same settings things don't scale to the external monitor dpi which I think is different as it is a 28 inch screen

 

[John Clark]

Admittedly, my dad was using a 15 inch to 17 inch external monitor at most - and from the days when it was more likely to be 1024 by 768 - so a whole lot older

Thinking about it though, I absolutely do use a laptop with external monitors (Work - 14 inch to twin 23 inchers, but all run at 1920x1080).
When I work from home though, I use two different brands and the sharpness on my own monitor compared to the work one I have for home is night and day with my home one being better - but probably cheaper and definitely older as well?" - that might be refresh though as the work one drops resolution to 1280 if you try and up the refresh.

 

[Marc]

When I work from home though, I use two different brands and the sharpness on my own monitor compared to the work one I have for home is night and day with my home one being better - but probably cheaper and definitely older as well?" - that might be refresh though as the work one drops resolution to 1280 if you try and up the refresh.

can also be affected by the display interface

I'm using a LG 42 ultrawide that runs 5120x1440 and supports 120Mhz refresh rate because the iGPU in my N100 base mini pc isn't HDMI 2.1 and if there was Display Port it would have to be 1.4.

Also found that older devices don't have the support for the resolution and will only go to 3440x1440.

 

[John Clark]

can also be affected by the display interface

I'm using a LG 42 ultrawide that runs 5120x1440 and supports 120Mhz refresh rate because the iGPU in my N100 base mini pc isn't HDMI 2.1 and if there was Display Port it would have to be 1.4.

Also found that older devices don't have the support for the resolution and will only go to 3440x1440.

Indeed but I think it's HDMI in both cases (though my home monitor also uses Display port for "my" computer so I don't keep swapping leads - have to have a look, but I need to sort out the desk anyway - The work monitor locks itself to 60mhz at 1920x1080

 

[Marc]

Indeed but I think it's HDMI in both cases (though my home monitor also uses Display port for "my" computer so I don't keep swapping leads - have to have a look, but I need to sort out the desk anyway - The work monitor locks itself to 60mhz at 1920x1080

the work monitor most likely only supports 60hz refresh rate as it more a feature of monitors targeted at the gaming market and your employer went for the cheapest most basic monitor they could get away with.

plus the computers themselves are are probably locked down to minimise what users can adjust.

 

[John Clark]

the work monitor most likely only supports 60hz refresh rate as it more a feature of monitors targeted at the gaming market and your employer went for the cheapest most basic monitor they could get away with.

plus the computers themselves are are probably locked down to minimise what users can adjust.

Sounds about right - we're in a shared building, and one of the other companies ordered a pair of 38 inch widescreens. Nice, but our desks are too small for both

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

OK well the headless laptop thing worked. but there are a couple of niggles which probably won't be solvable. Boot screen won't show in the external monitor, I think that's fixed in hardware and beyond some serious hardware hacking I don't think I'll get that going in the setup I chose to do.

The scaling is still off a little it's 1080p but even on the external monitor the scaling seems to be the same as if it were a 15 inch screen at 1080p. So not sure how to fix that one either or if it's again tied to hardware. But text and graphics are clear and sharp. Just from use it feels a little off.

 

[Marc]

OK well the headless laptop thing worked. but there are a couple of niggles which probably won't be solvable. Boot screen won't show in the external monitor, I think that's fixed in hardware and beyond some serious hardware hacking I don't think I'll get that going in the setup I chose to do.

The scaling is still off a little it's 1080p but even on the external monitor the scaling seems to be the same as if it were a 15 inch screen at 1080p. So not sure how to fix that one either or if it's again tied to hardware. But text and graphics are clear and sharp. Just from use it feels a little off.

it's normal bios screen not to display as the laptop uses the internal display as the primary until told otherwise.

You could try pressing the key that changes between the internal and external screens to see if you get the bios display but it might rely on OS support.

Screen scaling can be adjusted in the display properties but you could always try a chat with a search engine or even an ai system for a solution.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

it's normal bios screen not to display as the laptop uses the internal display as the primary until told otherwise.

You could try pressing the key that changes between the internal and external screens to see if you get the bios display but it might rely on OS support.

That was Fn+F9 which is supposed to flip from internal to external but it seems locked now to just the external hdmi port. As for the scaling I tried all those options but it seems fixed somehow and not reacting. But it's clear and still sharp so there is that.

Screen settings are 1920x1080 so it's reading that correctly, I set scaling from 125% which was the scaling with the laptop panel back to 100% for this screen and so far now it is behaving. It was the scaling settings themselves which I did not notice previously... Now it's fixed. If I find a decent replacement lcd I might restore the laptop screen. But so far so good. I can live without needing to enter bios and this larger screen now feels nice.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

Curious here what's your oldest still working mechanical hard drive?

Still using a Seagate 2.5 inch drive marked as being made November 2020

 

[John Clark]

Curious here what's your oldest still working mechanical hard drive?

Still using a Seagate 2.5 inch drive marked as being made November 2020

A 40mb one - probably from the early 90s, though I'd have to look to see the brand (Doesn't get heavy use because it's an Amiga one )
In common use, I think most of mine will be pre 2020, some possibly back to a minimum of 2014. Newer ones I have lean towards SSDs though

 

[Santaman]

My oldest working drive is a 10MB Seagate ST-412 from a IBM PC XT built in 1981
The oldest drives in use are a pair of 200GB Samsung drives type HD200HJ bought in 2007

 

[John Clark]

Think my oldest common use HD's will be newer than the samsung ones you mention (larger, if I remember rightly, though I'll have to look at my desktop to remember)

Certainly nothing to compete with the 1981 one in the house any more. Got a 386 laptop with the appropriate aged drive, but any older drives not in use and the really old (through probably not an 81 pc, though still 80s I'd guess) went years back.

 

[Santaman]

I have some older drives in the 40MB to 1GB range but they're inside relics that are rarely used and a heap of HDD's coming from all kinds of discarded machines, I have some really old SCSI drives lying around, some PATA and some SATA drives.

I love the old days, lots of experimenting, drive sizes physically, interfaces, platter and head technology, it's become quite strict and standarized nowadays, mostly that's a good thing but really quirky stuff you can only find in weird mini PC's nowadays.