Let's figure out how to make a DIY eGPU (previously DIY ViDock)

[King of Interns]

Is there any chance once Gerry has completed his work he will produce a Vidock type product for less technical savvy people which is already built and ready to go?

[User Retired 2]

The green LED is on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :O Ill take a look to the PE2L!

What changed to get the PE2L's green LED switched on? Did you change jumper 1 (JP1) which controls how 3.3V is supplied to the pci-e slot?

Is there any chance once Gerry has completed his work he will produce a Vidock type product for less technical savvy people which is already built and ready to go?

A Box Solution

The PE4H is a great foundation to build upon around. This will differ depending on the graphics you wish to run. HD4670 users only need an external 10V-32V 5A (50W or more) notebook AC adapter to drive it as there is voltage regulation built on the PE4H. More powerful GPUs will need a proper PSU to drive them so may need to be boxed. I personally like how hwtools are selling the core components. The NBR community can come up with a few different ways this could be housed, perhaps even making kits available. The inputs/outputs we'd need to configure are:

Inputs
- power: PSU (pci-e, molex power) or 12V DC Jack
- expressport/mini pci-e: HDMI cable for x1 or x2 input
- USB: USB devices can be connected to USB plug

Outputs
- output: HDMI/VGA/DVI for LCD or monitor

[FrX]

Good news to hear
I guess waiting wont kill me, now we are going to get a BETTER solution. I have to admit that I felt a little bit sad because of trying x2 on nVidia card first. I am wondering if Gary could go and try it back with ATI cards as it may have a better result than nVidia (could help into figuring the best brand for this)

By the way, there are few things that aren't clear to me which prevents me from doing more accurate comparison. First, by telling us the graphic card name its really no enough as there many cards with the same name but with different speed/ram , etc ... You might get what I mean by visiting newegg and compare few cards to each others ( hxxp://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=260+gtx )
The second part which confuse me, Gary didn't mention his RE5 benchmark settings (so, can someone tell us his settings?)

Edit:
Noticed I need to spread rep before given it again *Self note*

[MexicanSnake]

@nando, Nope I mean look at the pictures you uploaded, the green led is on, maybe Ill send a mail to hwtools for more information.

I also forgot to mention this:

I was messing around with the hardware info, and I discovered that the ubication of my HD4850 was Bus PCI 4, dispositivo 0, función 0.

That means that my laptop has at least 4 PCI buses :O.

Are you sure the powersupply is good ? You use 3.3V from your laptop , maybe it's not powerfull enough.

I'd get a atx extension , remove the plug and solder the 3.3V and 12V lines to the correct pins on the PCB.

http://pinouts.ru/Slots/pci_express_pinout.shtml

Get a molex-> pci-e 6pin so yr sure the card gets the correct voltages on the correct pints.

edit : seems i was wrong, you supply 3.3V external. But you still have no 12V on the pci-e connector. Providing 12V on the pci-e connecter seems a good idea ! Those cards probably need it.

I use an external 12V 5A power supply (look at the power spcecifications of the PE2L, also it fits perfectly). Also I use a PC PSU of 400W.
But thaks for the help!!!! I really need to fully use it.

[[>>ahl395<<]]

I am building a box for it.

I will post some pictures of it when it is done. And my schematics/blueprints that I made. Of course, some measurments will change with what graphics card and PSU you have. \
...So far its coming out good. Almost done, too bad i wont be able to use until September.

[King of Interns]

Nando4 and ahl395 you have excellent news. I have just one final question. Will a the DIY boxed vidock be at all capable of driving the laptop LCD either now or in the future? Or is other hardware development needed?

[FrX]

Nando4 and ahl395 you have excellent news. I have just one final question. Will a the DIY boxed vidock be at all capable of driving the laptop LCD either now or in the future? Or is other hardware development needed?

This is really the most difficult question to answer at this point.
The way I see of using laptop's LCD will be by modding your laptop. (Remember your LCD screen is connected to your motherboard ,so you will need to mod it by using something like LCD controller/ LCD panel.
you can check those two websites for more info: hxxp://www.geocities.com/p9019/lcdpanel & hxxp://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/98801

Anyway there more ways in hardware part ,but the most logical way is in letting the OS doing it for you which might be done through writing/modifying the driver of your external GFX card and the internal one where It should send the graphics to process to the external (By using minipcie / expresscard) and obtaining the results and show it on the internal GFX card. Anther way to describe this idea is by telling you it is more like a movie that you play it through your computer,but a real time movie.

Edit:

For those who want to go even further in modifying their laptops lcd you check all of these:
Please notice that all of these solution are for giving ideas and may not be right (more theoretical than reality)

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/dvi_03cg_60


(You click the picture)
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ad7dlv
http://store.mo-co-so.com/jetwaydvia...ard-p-118.html

All of the above are meant to: change laptops lvds into something you can use with desktop graphic-card (These are the main parts + cables and stuff I didn't give link to them because they are easy to figure it out)

The more practical solution as I can tell is what are in the 2nd picture where you will link your laptop screen into that and that will makes your lcd screen accepts signals from dvi. So now if you linked that to graphics card (from your PC , vidock , etc) it will work!
Ok now for portability as most laptops have VGA as an output so again you will need to convert dvi-to-vga and link that to the dvi-lvds converter you used which in anther word, you turned your laptops screen as an external screen but it still a once peace within your laptop

Edit2: I forget to mention about using switches (Will makes your laptops screen as it is with the possibility of using an external graphics card)

[User Retired 2]

Nando4 and ahl395 you have excellent news. I have just one final question. Will a the DIY boxed vidock be at all capable of driving the laptop LCD either now or in the future? Or is other hardware development needed?

There's three ways I can think of approaching such an idea:

1/ USB external vga adapter. takes the VGA signals, passes them across USB, then has some sort of driver to display them on your LCD. Would be OK for desktop applications. For gaming? Consider 1280x1024 at 30FPS = 39MB/s of data transfer. USB 2.0's 480Gbps suggests 60MB/s, but real world performance data suggests more in the 30-40MB/s range. Factor in processing required between the VGA card, across the USB port to the LCD and you'd have laggy display. It also adds traffic to the pci-e bus. Would be OK for applications, but I wouldn't need a ViDock for that.

2/ Closer to the truth - tap the LVDS lines running into the LCD and run signals directly into the LCD from the desktop video card. This would require a notebook internal surgery to attach (i). Also needs more hardware for (ii)

(i) Would require some sort of double adapter/switch to allow either the notebook video in or an external video in. I don't believe they exist as yet.

(ii) Would need to *CONVERT* the DVI output from the desktop video card to LVDS input for the LCD. There's boxes around to do that. The *only* video cards that do LVDS out as standard are MXM ones, which are expensive and would require then further adaptation to run them as external units. I guess it we demanded it, perhaps desktop video cards can start adding a LVDS output port?

3/ Forget ViDock and jump on the DIY External MXM extension. The latter requiring a notebook with a MXM port and would be perhaps a better overall solution. The MXM port has LVDS input lines running to the LCD.

Personally I'd be happy with DIY ViDock's x1 1.0 (or better yet x2 1.0) to an external LCD as it's a cost effective way to see gaming on a X3100 equipped system never considered for such purposes. No need to replace my system with an MXM one, or start hacking it's internals either.

[toshiki]

Frx,
While rewriting video drivers is certainly possible it is only feasable at x8-x16 speeds due to the fact that single channel DVI output is pretty close to x1 2.0 capacity. In fact, this is what has been done with XGP drivers as XGP connectors do not have any video output wires in them(initially xgp didn't support laptop lcd output).

Devices that take video feed through all possible computer ports (other than video ports) are called "Frame Grabbers" and they are gradually hitting ExpressCard scene.
As seen from Frame Grabber experience - any compression introduced into the picture results in unacceptable usability delays for certain intensive applications.

King of Interns,
As you can already figure out from my reply to Frx - it is very unlikely for Vidock type devices to have usable laptop lcd functionality primarily due to bus speed limitations.

I am pretty sure Frame Grabber setups won't work as you'd need to use both internal and external video cards to redirect the feed which could be done with "the right drivers" but those drivers will never come with any Frame Grabber.

MXM project: I should be able to start working on it in around 3-4 weeks as the equipment and skilled hands become more accessible to me.
VillageTronic has entered a funny hibernation state with their facebook wall...
Gerry is a much more likely figure to produce a commercial product. Time will reveal.

[FrX]

Frx,
While rewriting video drivers is certainly possible it is only feasable at x8-x16 speeds due to the fact that single channel DVI output is pretty close to x1 2.0 capacity. In fact, this is what has been done with XGP drivers as XGP connectors do not have any video output wires in them(initially xgp didn't support laptop lcd output).

Devices that take video feed through all possible computer ports (other than video ports) are called "Frame Grabbers" and they are gradually hitting ExpressCard scene.
As seen from Frame Grabber experience - any compression introduced into the picture results in unacceptable usability delays for certain intensive applications.

King of Interns,
As you can already figure out from my reply to Frx - it is very unlikely for Vidock type devices to have usable laptop lcd functionality primarily due to bus speed limitations.

I am pretty sure Frame Grabber setups won't work as you'd need to use both internal and external video cards to redirect the feed which could be done with "the right drivers" but those drivers will never come with any Frame Grabber.

MXM project: I should be able to start working on it in around 3-4 weeks as the equipment and skilled hands become more accessible to me.
VillageTronic has entered a funny hibernation state with their facebook wall...
Gerry is a much more likely figure to produce a commercial product. Time will reveal.

Toshiki, it looks like that either you misunderstand me or I didn't express it (I am sorry if that's the case.) Well let me explain it a little bit better, I wasn't talking about Frame Grabber (The way you play your ps2 with your laptop screen through USB or recording from satellite , etc ...) I was talking about writing a driver to make an integrated GFX card talk directly to the other card.

Anyway the real thing that I was pointing out about what converting the laptop lcd into DVI/VGA so you can use it directly with any desktop graphics card.