Screen

So rather than going with the LED mod as I don't think it would saved me much power I decided to stick with the original back light in the screen. I used the Dell E153FP 15" LCD monitor. I opened it up and removed the original power/inverter board (they were all on one) and got the Controller board running on the Pico PSU. Here are two pictures of the controller board, the top and the bottom where power must be connected.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

In order to get the controller board working you must connect 3.3 volts to the two pins that the red wire is connected to in the picture. And then ground is the black wire. The other pins I believe are for sending information back to the inverter and such.

The inverter that I am using is one taken from a ccfl light kit for PC lighting. It runs on 12volts and produces enough light with the original ccfl tubes to make for a very bright screen.

For the top part of the case I decided to use the front of the case from the monitor since the cut out for the screen was already exactly the right size. I just had to cut off some tabs on it to get it to fit onto my case. I didn't like the finish on it though because after I painted it, since the finish was different then the acrylic I was using I would most likely end up with two different results. So I put a wire brush attachment onto my dremel and commenced to remove the finish. I then used a sponge sander, used for drywalling, to bring it to a smooth finish. Painting turned out well. I also painted the buttons for use with it. They are a little off white as to contrast against the black case. They turned out well. Here are some pictures of the result with the case glued to the screen.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

To mount the screen to the rest of the cast I glued 8 90 degree metal braces to the back of the screen. I glued a nut to the inside of the brace so that the front can be screwed onto the rest of the case from the sides. I also did this to make the screen removable for debugging after everything was assembled.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

There are 8 metal braces in total.