Alright, this is the bare minimum as far as wiring goes. I'm not tackling the power supply at the moment because I'm still in the middle of finals. I've had a few people clambering for this, so I wanted to at least get the majority of it out of the way.

Let me know if this is enough or if you really want me to detail the power supply, as well.

Let's do it...


Only one screw attaches the stand to the monitor. Take it off. Then remove every screw you can see on the backside.



Start prying the case open with screw drivers. It's one of the tougher cases I've had to open, but maybe I'm just a pansy.



There are clips holding the two halves together. When you get far enough along, you can start predicting where the clips are and it becomes easier.



Pull the front half away. Because of the power button at the bottom, open it from the top like so.



To separate the two halves completely, you have to unscrew the power button or just unplug the connector and come back for it later.



Looking at the LCD now, remove the screw in each corner.



Lift the LCD from the side with the screen controls. And see those wires holding it in? Unplug the back light connectors and continue lifting the LCD out.



The last thing standing between the LCD and freedom is the ribbon cable from the controller board. Remove the metallic tape on the back of the LCD holding the ribbon in place



The brown part on the connector just flips up and the ribbon cable slides out. You can use a finger nail or, if you bite your nails (shame on you), use a flat head screwdriver. Pull the LCD away and set it somewhere safe.



Unscrew all the screws here to remove the cage from the back of the monitor. While your screwdriver is in your hand, remove the LCD controls from the case, too. Take the whole cage out and you're done with the monitor case. Pull the cage apart while not jerking too hard on the ribbon cable.



Remove the screws from the power board.



Pull the power board off the controller board by separating this connector right here.



Go ahead and remove the ribbon cable and the connector for the buttons if you'd like. They just kind of get in the way at this point. Remove the screws around the controller board and remove the screws attaching the DVI and VGA connector to the metal cage. Pull it out.



This is the bottom side of the power board and inverter board.



This is where you can dremel it. I just did straight lines, but you can make it all pretty for yours, slimming it down and whatnot.



You can ignore doing this if you want, but to make the screen portion of your laptop as thin as possible, you want to desolder the back light connectors and resolder them to the other side, which has all the other components.



I reused the pins that I cut through when chopping the board in half, but you can use wire if you want. Remember that you're flipping the connector to the other side so keep the positive and negative lines correct. Do the same with the other one. Also, lay the taller capacitors and resistors flat on both this board and the controller board



Yellow is 12v, black is ground, and the two red wires tell the screen to turn on.





Run those wires to the controller board like so. I suppose you could just connect the 12v and ground to the connector, but then the area gets cluttered with multiple solder joints. You can desolder the entire connector, but connectors are awesome. Your 12v, 5v, and ground, from whatever source you're using, can go where I labeled.





I didn't do any taping or gluing, which you should do. You really need to make sure you have something separating the boards from the back of the LCD, too.

Let me know if anything needs changing or explaining. Thanks to Ben for answering some of my questions about this.

Thanks so much man. These are the exact solder points I traced out when you described what had to be done.

2nd to last picture needs a little clarification. Is the yellow wire soldered to the "leg of the invisible chip" or the one in the half circle next to it?

Either one is fine. They're both connected if you look at the traces, so you can get 12v from either. The leg of the invisible sound amp is just a little bigger, so I went with that one.

Also, to anybody who is looking for one of these, you can get just about any Gateway with similar specs and buttons on the side like this one and it has the exact same internals. I got an eMachines monitor built by Gateway and it's identical, save for the chip on the controller board.

in the xtop mark ii model they ran the 1775 power from the xbox 360's power pinout do i just wire the 12v to the xbox 12v and the 5v to the xbox 5v and so on?

Great Guide!

Could you go into a little more detail on the part of the driver board where the power board used to plug in? Do I need to have 12v for both of the 12v pins or just one? Do all of the ground pins need to be grounded? Thanks for your time in making this guide. Also, I've been using 12v and 5v from a floppy disk port on a PC power supply and I can get the power LED to come on, but the screen remains blank, is this not enough juice or did I break it? Thanks again!



Chris