[ale] Laptop without LCD panel (running Linux)

[Beddingfield, Allen]

One of my co-workers gave me a laptop that his wife dropped and broke 
the display, and the entire assembly off the back (LCD is broken, rear 
cover busted, hinge broken free from it, etc..).  The laptop body itself 
is fine.  I got on EBay and discovered that the entire display assembly 
is going to be about $150 to replace - not worth it.  So, I had another 
idea:  Open it up, remove the hinges, unplug the video/camera cable, and 
remove the wireless cables.  My plan was to just plug in a monitor to 
the vga output, and use it for a computer, somewhat looking like an 80s 
console without the TV.  I tried that, but got no video output.  So..  I 
plugged in the broken video cable, and attached it to the broken LCD 
panel.  I was able to see enough of the output to see that the PC is 
booting up.  It looks like the switch to the external output is done in 
software AFTER Windows comes up.  So much for my idea of a small Linux 
machine.
I'm wondering now if there is some sort of an adapter in existence that 
I can plug the video cable that goes into the back of the LCD panel to, 
and get VGA, DVI, HDMI, or some sort of useful output to connect a 
monitor to?

Any ideas, anyone?

Thanks.
Allen B.

-- 
Allen Beddingfield
Systems Engineer
Office of Information Technology
The University of Alabama
Office 205-348-2251
allen at ua.edu