Sony PS-One 5" LCD Tech Notes
My Project requires the use of various screens. I had a few requirements for them:

  • Cheap, Cheap, and Cheap.
  • Small size footprint, particularly in depth.
  • Low power usage
  • versatile

    At first I had bought a small portable TV at Target for $24.99. It was black and white but it only consumes 1 amp at 12 Volts and has audio/video input jacks. However, I realized later that ths PS-One LCD is quite cheap. You can often pick them up for $25 on ebay, plus shipping. They require 7.5 volts to operate which is no problem since mine came with a cigarette lighter adapter. So I can run it from 12V. It is the same screen size as my portable TV I bought, only a lot sharper and color too.

    R-G-B - The coolest thing about the PS-One LCD is that is supports RGB input. It is just like a VGA signal only the sync is based off NTSC composite standard and runs at 30 frames a second. However, there are several devices that output this type of signal. To name a few, most game consoles (Nintendo 64, gamecube, Xbox, Playstation, etc.) and the original Amiga line of systems like the A500, A1000, and A2000. The Atari ST, and the Apple IIgs. This looks great on an Amiga and an Apple IIgs. In fact, I think it looks better on an Amiga because the horizontol pixels line up better with the output from that system. The IIgs has a large border area. Click the image for a larger picture. I took this photo in a hurry so it isn't really doing it justice. It may even be possible to use this on the Commodore 128's RGB output but would require a little work since it is TTL and not analog.

    The screen also supports composite video, which I've used on my C64 and it looks pretty good. It does not appear to support S-Video. The pins on the A/V connector that are normally used for S-video are not connected to anything. Too bad, the C64 could make good use of that.

    Resolution - I have searched the web over 100 times trying to find the physical resolution of this screen. But so far I can't find it. I am making an educated guess that it is 352x240. The reason I believe this is because when connected to the Apple IIgs, each vertical line is accounted for and perfect. Since there is also a border area that is displayed I am guessing the 240 resolution. However, in 80-column mode, it appears every-other pixel is cut out on the LCD so that leads me to believe the main screen is getting 320 pixels across and if you include the border that would be 352. Besides 352x240 is VideoCD resolution, sort of makes sense.

    I've included a schematic. This is the wiring to use to connect to an Apple IIgs video port. But you could pretty much go off of this for any analog RGB signal as long as the sync matches 15 Khz.

    I've also included two close-up pictures. One is taken with composite input, the other with RGB so you can see the difference in quality. In order to see this right, make sure you have image-resizing turned off in Internet Explorer. Also the images look a little blocker than in real life due the the fact that the screen and the camera are both polarized.

  • Apple IIgs with Composite Input 1024x768
  • Apple IIgs with R.G.B. Input 1024x768

    Finished Wires
    Commodore 64 screenshot
    Stand from Side
    Amiga 500
    As you can see in the picture, my final product has 8 female RCA jacks attached. They are labeled as follows: Red, Green, Blue, Sync, Audio-L, Audio-R, Audio-M, Composite-Video. I also added a small switch which is required to turn the unit on into RGB mode. The unit auto-detects a signal on composite-video. The RCA jacks work good because that way I can make various cables from different sources that all end up with a series of male RCA jacks. Also, the stereo audio is only available in RGB mode and the mono audio is used with the composite. That is just the way the screen was designed.. Sorry. It is also worth noting that the speaker wires are routed through the little daughterboard so that the headphone jack can switch them off if headphones are plugged in. So if you remove the daughterboard you might notice that the sound doesn't work. All that is required is to connect two wires together from the main jumble of wires comming from the main board to the daughterboard to correct this. Also I added a screenshot of the Amiga workbench. This came from an Amiga 500's RGB port.

    I used a cheap $5 paper-towel holder I bought at Wal Mart for the stand. I had to modify it a bit, moving the legs back about 1.5 inches and cutting some pieces off. I also made a custom bracket and used J.B. Weld to attach it to the back of the screen. Also note that the fuzz you see in the frontal picture is because I am not using the flash on the camera. Otherwise you'd just see a reflection in the screen. So the fuzz is comming from the camera, not the screen. The "International Karate" screen from my C64 in real life is quite clear, actually.

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