Use an old computer for a lab bench or just have one sitting around? Chances are good that if it’s more than a few years old, it’ll have a parallel port on it. If you also run Linux and want to play around with I/O you should take a look at this project. It’ll show you how to hook up a standard 16×2 LCD character screen to your parallel port, create drivers for it, and then control it using redirects to /dev/my_lcd. Very cool!
I’ve seen (and heavily considered stealing) many Arcade/MAME cabinet builds over the years…but this is a first. A custom build Pinball Machine Cabinet for emulated pinball games. It uses 3 LCD screens (marque, dot matrix, and play field) and a ton of little hardware bits to reproduce the sounds, vibrations, and knocks one would feel on a real machine. Really amazing!
XBMC is a vital tool in my home media setup. Anyone wanting to build a home theater PC (HTPC) that will really WOW people needs to look into XBMC. I’ll likely post more about my personal setup on the wiki at some point in the future, but here‘s some info about the newly beta released XBMC 11.0 with a great deal of enhancements.
I’ve taken on a couple faulty LCDs in the past, but have had mixed results in repairing them. I’ve had the best success when a visibly busted capacitor can be found and replaced, but this guide goes into more detail on how to diagnose and fix some other common LCD issues as well. Complete with lots of clearly labeled pictures.
http://neoxy-yx.blogspot.com/2011/12/tips-and-tricks-on-repairing-lcd.html