Acer Extensa Laptop 5620 Hotrod Overhaul Guide

Step 11 The WXGA to WUXGA LCD cable mod PT2 - seen here first!

Now the fun part begins- adding wires to our original Acer LCD cable.

Here's the reasoning and explanation behind this mod. I give you the pinout for the standard 30-pin dual channel LCD connector:

1 ground
2 +3.3v
3 +3.3v
4 +3.3v
5 nc/key
6 DDC Clock
7 DDC Data
8 A D0-
9 A D0+
10 ground
11 A D1-
12 A D1+
13 ground
14 A D2-
15 A D2+
16 ground
17 A Clock-
18 A Clock+
19 ground
20 B D0-
21 B D0+
22 ground
23 B D1-
24 B D1+
25 ground
26 B D2-
27 B D2+
28 ground
29 B Clock-
30 B Clock+

The green highlighted connections are the ones used in our Extensa's WXGA cable, black are empty spots. As you can see, the entire B data channel is unconnected; hence the garbled display when trying to use anything over 1280 x 800 resolution. So we'll add in eight wires on the empty slots of 20 through 30. You should be able to see this pattern on your 30-pin plug, and count off the proper pins.

I chose not to unwrap my entire original cable; instead, I only removed or peeled back what I needed in order to access the connectors and hook in extra wires. The metal contacts slide in part way, then need to be clicked in the rest of the way using some pressure. I used a pin. There's no need to touch the plastic tabs on our original cable- we don't want to stress or damage them, as that's what holds the contacts in place. I then used some of the tape from the spare cable to keep the eight loose wires bound against the original, and re-wrapped the plug ends. Try to keep everything as flat as possible, since this has to go back behind the screen.

The picture shows a head-on view of the 40 pin plug; the lettered spots are currently empty on both plugs and need to be filled with wires jumping the following connections:

A: #12 (40-pin) to #20 (30-pin) = B D0-
B: #11 (40-pin) to #21 (30-pin) = B D0+
C: #10 (40-pin) to #23 (30-pin) = B D1-
D: #9 (40-pin) to #24 (30-pin) = B D1+
E: #8 (40-pin) to #26 (30-pin) = B D2-
F: #7 (40-pin) to #27 (30-pin) = B D2+
G: #6 (40-pin) to #29 (30-pin) = B Clock -
H: #5 (40-pin) to #30 (30-pin) = B Clock +

This completes the data connection, making our cable (and laptop) now truly WUXGA LCD capable!