Modding PsOne 5" TFT display screen for CDU

Finding a right size (5" diagonal) display for building CDU could be a challenge. Luckily, Sony Playstation One (PsOne) game system has a TFT screen that exactly fills in the need. I bought two of those on ebay and stripped the display screens out.

There are detailed guides online explaining how to do the mod and make it work with normal computer VGA output.

I bought a Matrox Mystique graphics card (again on ebay) and tried to make it work with the VGA output. Spent long time messing with the Powerstrip settings but without any luck.

Frustrated, i finally decided to go with the alternative - connecting the psone unit directly to the video card's video out (s-video) port. So i used my other nVidia video card that has TvOut option, and connected it directly to the psone unit and voila...it works beautifully. Surprisingly the resolution is adequate and the display looks good even at an angle. (see the picture below).

However, one disadvantage with TvOut is - some video cards (including mine) don't fill the entire screen, instead they leave about half an inch border all around the image. This won't be good for CDU as you can imagine. But fortunately there is a solution (as always). TvTool software can 'overscan' and fill the image entire screen. Read this nvidia explanation if you want to know more about this.

I used Ctrl+cursor command to adjust the Project Magenta's image location and then Alt+cursor to adjust the text position. (Note: cursor mean up/down arrows keys on your keyboard).

And at the end, i have great looking 5" Project Magenta's CDU image on a sony PsOne screen. I am ready for rest of the hardware around it now...

Here is the image at an angle...


CDU on PsOne screen via TvOut of Video card
 

Below, you can also see the back of a stripped PsOne unit...