HV150UX1-101 screen in T60/61 Frankie

[dpj]

Despite being assured by the Chinese Ebay seller that the HV150UX1-101 screen is the same as the HV150UX1-100, I have found that it is not and it doesn't work (black screen) in my T60/61 Frankenpad.
I have spent many hours reading through old posts on this and other forums and it seems that in order to get the 101 screen to work I need to edit the EDID info in the screen chip. I have read about this but the posts are really old now and I was wondering if there is now an 'easy' way to do this with some software? I don't want to get involved with soldering or buying any hardware if possible.
Any help will be much appreciated.

[atagunov]

No experience here, and nothing definitive, but I was also reading one of the older threads related to fixing EDID in a display panel and came across advice to use some commercial software named.. Powerstrip? The advice was to purchase a copy. When I read that I thought, surely there must be alternative ways? From a quick look it seems that there are useful tools written for Linux. This was literally the first tool I came across. That page also mentions "ic2detect -l" and I was just able to execute "sudo apt-get install i2c-tools" and "sudo ic2detect -l" is showing something on my T520. Well I can't make any sense of it but still The summary here is that my gut feeling is that you might do quite well to work from under Linux. And from all Linux-es around in my view Ubuntu is the easiest to work from. Is this something you were going to try? Also I understand in order to mess with EDID you would need to keep working with your Thinkpad while the new panel is already installed. So it seems you'd need an external monitor. Was that also part of your plan? Can you use an external monitor with your T60/T61? I imagine you'd either need a monitor with VGA input, a VGA-to-something-more-modern-converter, or perhaps a 2504 docking station with DVI output.

Update: while "ic2detect -l" looks interesting the next thing that I found online was advice to use "ddcutil", so I did

Code: Select all

...$ sudo apt install ddcutil
...
...$ sudo ddcutil detect
Invalid display
   I2C bus:             /dev/i2c-3
   EDID synopsis:
      Mfg id:           LEN
      Model:            
      Serial number:    
      Manufacture year: 2010
      EDID version:     1.3
   DDC communication failed
   This appears to be a laptop display. Laptop displays do not support DDC/CI.

Display 1
   I2C bus:             /dev/i2c-6
   EDID synopsis:
      Mfg id:           NEC
      Model:            LCD2690WUXi
      Serial number:    861.......
      Manufacture year: 2008
      EDID version:     1.3
   VCP version:         2.0
...$ sudo i2cdetect -l
i2c-3	i2c       	i915 gmbus panel                	I2C adapter
...
i2c-6	i2c       	i915 gmbus dpd                  	I2C adapter
...

So in my case I did find which i2c bus my panel is on. And it does seem like there is indeed a sufficiently rich universe of utilities for Linux. This all was on T520 running 20.04 Ubuntu.

[kfzhu1229]

No experience here, and nothing definitive, but I was also reading one of the older threads related to fixing EDID in a display panel and came across advice to use some commercial software named.. Powerstrip? The advice was to purchase a copy. When I read that I thought, surely there must be alternative ways? From a quick look it seems that there are useful tools written for Linux. This was literally the first tool I came across. That page also mentions "ic2detect -l" and I was just able to execute "sudo apt-get install i2c-tools" and "sudo ic2detect -l" is showing something on my T520. Well I can't make any sense of it but still The summary here is that my gut feeling is that you might do quite well to work from under Linux. And from all Linux-es around in my view Ubuntu is the easiest to work from. Is this something you were going to try? Also I understand in order to mess with EDID you would need to keep working with your Thinkpad while the new panel is already installed. So it seems you'd need an external monitor. Was that also part of your plan? Can you use an external monitor with your T60/T61? I imagine you'd either need a monitor with VGA input, a VGA-to-something-more-modern-converter, or perhaps a 2504 docking station with DVI output.

Huh sounds interesting. I am looking at trying this out if I can have the reassurance that I won't "brick" a screen by doing so. I have a Precision M4300 with a replaced Samsung screen that works but the colours are wrong before Windows boots up. Is there any database for things like the EDID code for a given model of the screen? And does flashing in an EDID code from a different brand screen with the same resolution harm the screen?
Maybe what might help though is for you to try the screen on something like a 15" ThinkPad A3x, T4x or R5x with the UXGA cable and see if it works fine there, as those machines ignore the EDID information and just go with the jumpers on the LCD cable. At least that way you can make sure the screen is not defective.

[atagunov]

Is there any database for things like the EDID code for a given model of the screen?

In case of HV150UX1-101 I was hoping the OP could check if there is a EDID chip at all on his panel - by trying to dump its content. So if there is one I thought he could probably (a) dump the existing one, (b) have some kind soul with HV150UX1-100 dump his and make it available, (c) flash it in and see what happens. Or maybe there is already a EDID file for HV150UX1-100 available somewhere online, possibly in those old topics on this forum. If things still don't go right after flashing I was hoping OP could flash back in the original EDID and try to return the panel to the seller... Not an easy thing to do though given he is in China.

I think the older topics may contain EDID files for particular panels that were used with success. To me these EDID files seem a little bit similar to custom BIOS files which also fly around here and there.. It would be nice of course to have access for some kind of a bigger database of EDID files, but I'm total noob here, so have no idea if one exists

[dpj]

@ataguvnor
Many thank for your replies.
I was hoping to stay in the Windows environment as I'm not at all familiar with Linux. I also came accross Powerstrip in old posts and noted that the free version didn't contain an edit function. I was hopeful that someone would know of a more up to date Windows utility that would enable editing or flashing of the EDID.
Yes, I understand that I will need to connect an external monitor. I was hoping to get a VGA to HDMI cable to connect to a television.

This topic contains the required EDID information for the HV150UX1-100 screen:

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=82149&hilit=edid+database

@kfzhu1229
Your suggestion to try the screen on another 15" model is a good idea but I don't have access to any and would the 30 pin screen connector work with them anyway? I'm fairly sure the screen works as I did see a very short flash of my desktop for a fraction of a second.

[kfzhu1229]

Your suggestion to try the screen on another 15" model is a good idea but I don't have access to any and would the 30 pin screen connector work with them anyway? I'm fairly sure the screen works as I did see a very short flash of my desktop for a fraction of a second.

A fraction of a second? You are sure here that we are working with EDID issues, not a dead backlight or a faulty display cable right?
To be clear, your issue should be either the backlight is on but the screen is displaying pure black or pure white, or the backlight is off and if you shine a torch on there you see it's also solid colour and not contain anything.
If the screen comes on for one second and then the backlight goes dark, it's a faulty backlight and this EDID trick will not do any good at all.

[ajkula66]

My T43pSF sports a -101 panel that one of the forum elders tried to flash the EDID on and failed, like so many others. But it works OOTB on the older systems.

On a T6x, stick with the -100 LCD, or go to the LED Hydis. There is also an ID Tech that shipped in some T60p models - too tired to look for the FRU right now - and that's about it.

[atagunov]

... but isn't it possible - in Linux - to load the EDID from software? Okay the machine would end up just half-functional - if anything goes wrong early during boot you'll need an external monitor to investigate. Regardless of that what kfzhu1229 said sounds very true - if there's no backlight there's some problem apart form EDID. Shining a flashlight at the panel is also a good idea - to check if it's just the backlight that is dead but the image is actually there. And indeed it would be good be sure it's not the cable.