My son has a PC with no monitor, and an OLD laptop (circa 2002). They both support VGA. Is there an easy way to connect the PC to the laptop such that the PC displays on the laptop's screen? So basically the laptop's internals are not being used, we just want to use its display for a connected PC. The laptop does work, it's just too slow to be useful. But its built-in monitor still works fine.
Is there any way?
Not likely possible. Normal VGA is uni-directional, so even if you managed to physically connect the PC's VGA-out to the laptop's VGA-out, it would be the electrical equivalent of driving two cars towards each other -- in a single lane!
It may be possible to engineer a bidirectional VGA port that has automatic directional override, but it's either (a) too difficult or (b) too expensive, otherwise most laptops would offer the feature, and then it would already be common knowledge.
It may be feasible to disassemble the laptop and hack the screen's connection to the mainboard, but chances the manufacturer put their own twist on whatever is driving the display, and you won't find a simple "VGA signals go in here" place to wedge in your PC's VGA output.
Using cables will not work because the ports on laptops are usually for output not input.
You should consider using Remote Desktop or things like this. If you cant, you are out of luck.
Its better to buy a new monitor, a LCD maybe since LCDs show things almost same as LEDs and they cost lesser. New monitor worth the price.
You can not use the VGA output connector on your laptop as an input.
However what you can do is use a video grabber. This is a device that takes an input (e.g. from VGA) and turns it into digital information (e.g. to record what would normally appear in the screen. Think of it as an 'image microphone'.
Then 'play' the captured image in real time on the laptops display.
Note that such a device might be more expensive than a new monitor.
to assume the laptop and monitor have one of the following connections yes:
1) serial to serial (like the old printer connections)
2) vga to vga/dvi/hdmi
or you can somehow convert the presumably vga connection on the laptop to dvi/hdmi
