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Toshiba T3200SXC needs new LCD scree, need help finding compatible replacement.

new_castle_j

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2011
Messages
318
Location
Texas, USA
Hi everyone!

I've got a Toshiba T3200SXC portable, the screen comes on rather crisp for a few minutes at boot, but quickly fades to nearly illegible washed out colorless pale grey. I'm wondering if anyone can help me find a suitable replacement screen. Here's what I know about it from the manual and from taking it apart:

Toshiba P/N VF0060P01
Sharp P/N LQ10D013

10.4 inch screen, 640 x 480 pixels, TFT Colour LCD (VGA), 512 color capability
Maximum of 185193 colors (256 colors at one time)
VGA compatible Graphics Adapter WD90C21

The motherboard connects to the LCD with a 28 pin I/F connector, 27 of the pins are in use. Attached is the pin assignment table:

LCD-Pins.jpg

If anyone knows how to use this information to find a suitable replacement, I'd be most thankful. There's currently an LQ10D013 on Ebay for $1490.00! I have no idea why so expensive. http://www.ebay.com/itm/new-LCD-Scr...351?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2344bc5037

Jonathan
 
This is a common problem with these machines. Seen the same thing on the T6600 & T6400. It's down to failing capacitors on the inverter board.

Cheers,
Dave
 
This is a common problem with these machines. Seen the same thing on the T6600 & T6400. It's down to failing capacitors on the inverter board.

That's good information, are you suggesting that my current screen could be repaired with a few capacitors?
 
I've been researching this on my own, but not sure if I understand correctly. The pin out on the manual lists the following signals:
R0, R1, R2, G0, G1, G2, B0, B1, B2

To me this would suggest a 9 bit RGB signal, 3 bits for each R, G, B
perhaps over a TTL interface?

The most basic modern 10.4" screens I can get a datasheet for seem to require 18 bit TTL, 6 bits per color.

Anyone out there familiar enough with LCD interfaces to confirm if I'm on the right track?

Sometimes it's just about knowing enough of the right vocabulary to ask Google the right question.
 
Somebody else with the same problem...

http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=42242

1st thing to check would be the capacitors on the inverter board. If it's anything like the T6400, it will be these that are causing the issues with the contrast. Sadly, I can't be any more specific as I done the repair on a T6400 nearly 10 years ago and no longer have the machine to check :(

Cheers,
Dave
 
I was able to install a new screen into the T3200SXC. One nice thing about this model is that there's gobs of room inside the case. It also has a VGA out on the motherboard. My solution was to remove the motherboard, flip it over and solder wire leads onto the through-hole pins of the VGA connector. Then I routed the wires up through the inside of the case. I ordered a new LED backlit 10.4 screen with VGA input and shoehorned it into the original brackets of the failed screen. A bonus to this modification is that the original LCD only supported 640x480, and my new screen now supports 800x600, which the VGA out also supports. The end result is fantastic, everything looks and works like the machine has been unmodified.
IMG_0591.jpgIMG_0593.jpgIMG_0594.jpg


The next challenge is to see if I can get the XTIDE BIOS installed and working on this machine.:D
 
I was able to install a new screen into the T3200SXC. One nice thing about this model is that there's gobs of room inside the case. It also has a VGA out on the motherboard. My solution was to remove the motherboard, flip it over and solder wire leads onto the through-hole pins of the VGA connector. Then I routed the wires up through the inside of the case. I ordered a new LED backlit 10.4 screen with VGA input and shoehorned it into the original brackets of the failed screen. A bonus to this modification is that the original LCD only supported 640x480, and my new screen now supports 800x600, which the VGA out also supports. The end result is fantastic, everything looks and works like the machine has been unmodified.
View attachment 22161View attachment 22162View attachment 22163


The next challenge is to see if I can get the XTIDE BIOS installed and working on this machine.:D

Impressive mod, I should look into something like that with my broken screen Zeos 386 laptop.

I am not familiar with the T3200, are there any unoccupied ROM Sockets? Or can you tap ISA bus via an expansion connector of some kind? If so, it should be doable getting XTIDE BIOS on it. If not, you could always go the software route and use a DDO like OnTrack DiskManager, that's the route I usually go on laptops (like I did on my working screen Zeos 386).
 
One very nice feature of this machine is that it has 2 ISA expansion slots built in, 1 8bit and another 16bit slot. I've got a 3Com Etherlink II with an empty ROM socket that I'm going to try with.
 
One very nice feature of this machine is that it has 2 ISA expansion slots built in, 1 8bit and another 16bit slot. I've got a 3Com Etherlink II with an empty ROM socket that I'm going to try with.

Should work just fine in a Etherlink II, I have run the XTIDE BIOS in the ROM socket of an Etherlink II and III before successfully, as well as a slightly more modern Linksys ISA card.
 
So you took this from grayscale and made it into color?

Not in this case, the T3200 SXC had a color screen to begin with (hence the C in the model name)
The one big difference is that the new screen is 800x600, while the old screen was 640x480

There was another model called the T3200SX which is the same machine, only with an amber gas plasma screen. I believe this same modification could be done to one of those since I am pig-tailing off of the VGA out and not using the original internal wiring to drive the monitor.
 
There was another model called the T3200SX which is the same machine, only with an amber gas plasma screen. I believe this same modification could be done to one of those since I am pig-tailing off of the VGA out and not using the original internal wiring to drive the monitor.

I would never do that on a working plasma, I think those are such dang cool screens :D
 
But in this case the original screen was bad. It would be a workable solution for a dead plasma screen

For sure, that's why I said I wouldn't do it to a working one ;-)

I am going to try something like this to my Zeos 386 with a bad LCD, I'll just have to find a VGA screen the right size.
 
I've been researching this on my own, but not sure if I understand correctly. The pin out on the manual lists the following signals:
R0, R1, R2, G0, G1, G2, B0, B1, B2

To me this would suggest a 9 bit RGB signal, 3 bits for each R, G, B
perhaps over a TTL interface?

The most basic modern 10.4" screens I can get a datasheet for seem to require 18 bit TTL, 6 bits per color..


It's an old thread, but I just managed to install a new 10.4 inch 640x480 TFT screen into that machine. I 3D printed some mounting adapters, because the new screen had smaller case, and I also had to do solder some wires. The new screen was regular 486/Pentium 1 laptop-style 18 bit, 6bit per color, similar screens are also used in industrial machines. But I found out that this isn't a problem, because you can easily convert that to 9bit. Just connect R0 with R1, R2 with R3, R4 with R6 etc... and it requires no logic chips or anything else at all. The only function of these R G B lines is setting the brightness of each pixel. I etched some small adapter PCB at home because the new screen had 0.5mm ribbon connector with 32 pins and I couldn't solder wires to the pins. So I soldered the ribbon to the adapter, soldered the 2mm pitch connector and I had to solder some additional wires manually, from the pads visible on PCB to appropriate pins (service manual is needed to do that).

So, if anyone else has T3200 with broken screen, it's possible to fix and you can use more modern TFT panels ;)

lcd1.jpg
You can see white 3D printed parts

working2.jpg
Previous owner has left German DOS on the disk

adapter22.jpg
(that's probably not professionally designed PCB... and it should be front layer, not bottom - it shouldn't be mirrored)
 
Update (i can no longer edit my post):

If you will connect everything the way I did it will work, but it will look okay only in 16-color VGA mode. I noticed that such connection is incorrect, because it raises the contrast by high amount, when 256 colors are displayed - darker colors are darker than they should be, and bright are brighter. Only basic colors some mixes of them are okay.

The explanation is simple, just look at this:

When you wire R0 with R0 and R1, R1 with R2 and R3 and R2 with R4 and R5 (laptop connector bold), you will get following values for 8 possible shades of red color (decimal and binary):

00 000000
03 000011
12 001100
15 001111
48 110000
51 110011
60 111100
63 111111


Colors aren't linear now, it is clear when you look at decimal values. The curve would look like this:
curve11.jpg

If you want to use 3-bit LCD controller with 6 bit LCD screen, you have to wire it the following way:

R0 with R3, R1 with R4, R2 with R5. That's only 3 wires for a color channel, other wires remain unconnected.

Colors are linear now:

00 000000
08 001000
16 010000
24 011000
32 100000
40 101000
48 110000
56 111000

curve10.jpg

The only downside is that the screen is about 11% darker (because max. value should be 63) - but this isn't noticeable at all.

I hope that this post will be helpful for anyone trying to fix the screen in old laptops. It is very hard (or expensive) to find a matching screen for such old hardware and it will be often necessary just to use what you can find and adapt it.

By the way, you can probably put TFT screen in place of DSTN screen and vice-versa - I tried swapping screens of my Siemens-Nixdorf PCD-4ND laptops (it was easy to do because they are being held just by 3 screws and there are no cables, just built-in connectors) - and different types of screens worked in different laptops.
 
Last edited:
I hope that this post will be helpful for anyone trying to fix the screen in old laptops. It is very hard (or expensive) to find a matching screen for such old hardware and it will be often necessary just to use what you can find and adapt it.

By the way, you can probably put TFT screen in place of DSTN screen and vice-versa - I tried swapping screens of my Siemens-Nixdorf PCD-4ND laptops (it was easy to do because they are being held just by 3 screws and there are no cables, just built-in connectors) - and different types of screens worked in different laptops.

Brilliant! I love it, you have figured out how to use the original wiring, that's what I couldn't do so I cheated and piggy-back soldered onto the VGA out.
I wanted to run Slackware Linux on this machine, but found that the memory is a tiny bit too small. Toshiba had some kind of proprietary 2MB SIMMS in this machine, more of those SIMMS are nowhere to be found, if only there was a way to get it to recognize other SIMMS as 2MB, then I believe Slackware would run ok on this machine, 13MB is the maximum supported memory.

BTW, the XTIDE ROM works great with this machine too, it will enable the onboard IDE controller to recognize any IDE disk so you're not limited to the Connor Peripherals factory hard drives anymore!
 
Thanks for the info about XTIDE ;)

Toshiba had some kind of proprietary 2MB SIMMS in this machine, more of those SIMMS are nowhere to be found, if only there was a way to get it to recognize other SIMMS as 2MB, then I believe Slackware would run ok on this machine, 13MB is the maximum supported memory.

I am having some problems with memory now, because parity error sometimes shows up and memtest crashes even before it starts. I removed 6 1MB modules and the problem remains even with onboard 1MB memory, so I am in process of desoldering the onboard chips and soldering DIP sockets, so I can easily install and remove and check what's not working.

I found some information here (in comments) about using different memory modules, but I didn't try it:

http://omolini.steptail.com/t3200sx/mirror/www.ailis.de/~k/archives/21-Toshiba-T3200-SXC.html

I have discovered out how to make a standard 2 Meg or 1 Meg 30 pin SIMM work in the T3200sx. What you have to do is cut the trace that is connected to the CASP line (pin 28) and connect that to the CAS line (pin 2). This will result in a 1 Meg module that will work with out the parity error that you will get with out this modification. I have noticed that your 2 Meg Toshiba SIMMs have only 4 chips on them instead of the usual 9 or 3. It would be interesting to try and find the datasheet for the chips and try and figure out the pinout of a 2 Meg Toshiba SIMM. In my T3200sx my 2 Meg modules have 6 chips and I have only been able to find the datasheet for 4 of them. I think that the other 2 are the parity chips but I am not sure. I have found out that pin 19 is grounded on the 2 Meg Toshiba SIMM. I am also guessing that pin 28 on the 2 Meg Toshiba SIMM is A10 but I am not sure. By the way feel free to post this information on your website where ever you think that people will read it.

I wonder if I can install 2MB chips instead of 1MB I desoldered. I also noticed that onboard VGA card has only 256KB of memory, it's WD 90C21 and I can't find the datasheet. I wonder if it would be possible to extend the video memory to 512KB, by piggybacking new memory chips, just like in Amiga 600 (like that: http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=37026&d=1380828442).
 
It's an old thread, but I just managed to install a new 10.4 inch 640x480 TFT screen into that machine. I 3D printed some mounting adapters, because the new screen had smaller case, and I also had to do solder some wires. The new screen was regular 486/Pentium 1 laptop-style 18 bit, 6bit per color, similar screens are also used in industrial machines. But I found out that this isn't a problem, because you can easily convert that to 9bit. Just connect R0 with R1, R2 with R3, R4 with R6 etc... and it requires no logic chips or anything else at all. The only function of these R G B lines is setting the brightness of each pixel. I etched some small adapter PCB at home because the new screen had 0.5mm ribbon connector with 32 pins and I couldn't solder wires to the pins. So I soldered the ribbon to the adapter, soldered the 2mm pitch connector and I had to solder some additional wires manually, from the pads visible on PCB to appropriate pins (service manual is needed to do that).

So, if anyone else has T3200 with broken screen, it's possible to fix and you can use more modern TFT panels ;)

View attachment 29821
You can see white 3D printed parts

View attachment 29822
Previous owner has left German DOS on the disk

View attachment 29823
(that's probably not professionally designed PCB... and it should be front layer, not bottom - it shouldn't be mirrored)

Hi,
I have the same problem. I have a perfect T3200sxc with a defective lcd panel Sharp LQ10D013
But i can't find any compatible 10.4 inch tft lcd screen in the netherlands.
I'm not really into lcd technology so i wonder how do i connect all these data lines to a modern 18 bit LCD ?

Screenshot_2017-06-19-20-24-01.jpg
 
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