LCL Li's "Cold Light Laptop" Uses a Custom Graphics Card with a Beautiful Electroluminescent Display
A VGA controller chip from the mid-'90s is repurposed to drive a beautiful glowing EL panel in this luggable project.
YouTuber LCL Li has designed a "cyberpunk cold light laptop," inspired by fictional post-apocalyptic wastelands — and driven by a custom graphics card compatible with electroluminescent (EL) display panels.
"Electroluminescence has a beautiful halo and a more sci-fi feel [than LCDs,]" Li explains of the thinking behind the chunky portable, which has more in common with luggables like the classic Osborne-1 than a modern clamshell laptop. "In the last century, it was widely used in aerospace displays. It has a unique halo glow and is very beautiful. When combined with a laser projection keyboard to form a laptop, it's a really cool thing."
The portable PC designed by Li is based primarily around off-the-shelf components, with one difference: a custom graphics card, built around the CHIPS Multimedia F65548/5, a Video Graphics Adapter (VGA) chip dating back to the mid-90s. While it was launched as a way to drive flat-panel liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) and vacuum-tube-based cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), Li is using it to run an EL panel — for no other reason than aesthetics.
"The price of electroluminescent screens is not cheap," Li admits of the practicality of the project, calling out the LJ64H052, EL640.480-AF1, EL640.480-AG1, and EL640.480-AM as models which have been tested as compatible with the custom graphics card. "It has a PCI [Peripheral Component Interconnect] interface," the maker adds, "and you can also use it with a PCIe [PCI Express] interface through an adapter."
The custom graphics card is installed in an off-the-shelf PC motherboard, which is then housed in a specially-designed 3D-printed luggable housing. Input is provided using a thematically-appropriate laser keyboard — which projects the image of a QWERTY keyboard onto the desk and then tracks finger taps for text input, providing about as much tactile feedback as a Sinclair ZX80.
The project is documented on Hackaday.io, with STL files, schematics, and PCB design files for anyone looking to make their own.