Since ages I had in mind to combine one of my graphic tablets with the old 15″ flat screen I still have lying around, in order to create a pressure sensitive flat screen - what Wacom sells under the name of “Cintiq” for up to 3000€. My last attempt, two years ago failed at writing the X mouse driver for the tablet I have. It’s an A3+ Kontron Digicad Vision. It’s large, and it features an excellent pressure and tilt sensor. Plus it comes with a full description of its communication protocol with the serial port. It was absolutely no hassle to send control codes and read out the data using a small C program. Where I gave up last time was at getting my self-written driver to actually get recognized by the XFree86 server.That said, time has passed, and I am sure that with Xorg everything will be better[tm] and easier[tm].

So, a few days ago, via hack-a-day I stumbled upon this great tutorial and my motivation was back again. I disassembled my flat screen instantly, and successfully stripped it from all its metal casing. Since the screen too is one of the early generation models, everything was well accessible and secured by simple screws and clips. I successfully found out that the backlight and display are almost metal-free - except for two rails on the top and bottom of the display which I am planning to remove as well.

The boards are connected by FCC cables mostly, and it seems very doable to move them to the back of the tablet. I will just need a few longer cables. Fortunately, we have an excellent shop, Segor Electronics, in the street, where I hope to find the gear. The only one that gives me grief is a this small one:

It’s a 20-pin, 0.5mm pitch etched cable which is only held by a clamp in its socket. And it seems that this is one where an extension is definitely needed.