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I recently had an interesting find at a local thrift store: a mess of televisions used in a correctional facility! Unfortunately, I didn't find any drugs or shivs hidden in mine (would be a bit hard, given the cases are clear) but they're nice pieces of kit for $8 each.
They'd be super handy as external monitors for something like htop or other system monitors, but the HDMI and VGA port appear to be disabled somehow. However, intriguingly, there is a USB port "for factory use only". I can get about 5 more if I want and I can find a good project for them, but I don't really know where to start when it comes to potentially modifying them to re-enable the HDMI port. I figure they just need their firmware configured to enable the ports, but I have no idea where to start. If anyone has any ideas of where to start poking around I'd appreciate it. They're also a rather unusual item, so I'd be glad to entertain any questions you may have about them.
Imgur album with some pictures of one of the monitors in question.
As always, thanks!
[Editor's Note: I've done a bit of web searching, the monitor is marked as AMP'D HDTV Monitor SLTV-1519AP-3S with ATSC Tuner, and others seem to have got it working. It appears to be useful as a gaming display, as well as for other purposes. It is a 15" screen (720p). Anyone with any ideas?]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @03:52PM
I had a similar thing with industrial computer. A cute aluminum casing and inside every block from another factory. Nice ~5-inch LCD, floppy disk drive and a small Intel computer inside. Unfortunately the display was connected using some proprietary interface, while still having a nice composite input socket in PCB.
Generally in these problems it is needed to access the service menu. Some have it hard-coded and require to start while pressing some buttons, some require specific key sequences, especially nasty stuff requires factory software connected by cable.
What I did, I searched for chips on the display's mainboard in datasheets. I had luck, found datasheet of one, and it was something like an universal LCD controller with a vendor-programmable menu. And there were 8 pins for buttons.
Found on PCB that 4 of them had tracks with empty pads. As I measured all of them were internally pulled up, so I pulled them down one by one to check what happens. This way I determined "Menu", "Up", "Down", "Back" buttons. Next I tried starting the display with different buttons pressed and I found the combination for service menu: Menu+back. It was then possible to change the input.
This was in hardware from late 1990s, since then it could change a lot.
Good luck.