A few years ago I was on the Wacom site oggling cintiqs and swearing at teh ridiculous prices and thinking "surely that's just a monitor mounted over a tablet", and "I wonder what the read height on my tablet is?". I suddenly found myself buying for-spares monitors, getting a larger Wacom for free, and buying a dremel.
The old girl got an upgrade last year. The screen was suffering from age and long term UV damage, and the Wacom part was serial so not supported in windows 7. A mate had written a programme to use on a teensy (a programmable chip) that converts serial to USB. The teensy also gets rid of the Wacom power supply and passes on USB power. and I found a new screen that ups the resolution to 1600 x 1200.


Edit- there's a rather rambling build log here www.bongofish.co.uk/wacom/wacom_pt1.html
( smaggers Like a gibbon on helium, Fri 12 Oct 2012, 20:21, 8 replies)

That's one hell of a thin monitor if you can do pressure sensitivity (or in fact detect the pen at all) through it!

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Fri 12 Oct 2012, 21:12, closed)

It's just the LCD panel and backlight stripped out of the monitor casing, it's about 5mm IIRC, the pen read height is 9mm.
The pressure sensitivity is built into the pen and picked up by electromagic.
( smaggers Like a gibbon on helium, Fri 12 Oct 2012, 21:33, closed)

I really like this.
How much do you charge for these? I want one.
( brb Learn Ukrainian and prepare for a referendum, Sat 13 Oct 2012, 3:00, closed)

I didn't want to appear pushy
but I'm next in the queue behind Rosemary's brb.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Sat 13 Oct 2012, 6:07, closed)

You could make a fucking fortune off these.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Mon 15 Oct 2012, 15:10, closed)

^ What bitch-tits said.

(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Tue 16 Oct 2012, 8:22, closed)

I did wonder about that

I set up a forum for anyone interested in making one. I don't get there much these days but there are some very clever people there.

forum.bongofish.co.uk/index.php

One of the forum members started making kits.
( smaggers Like a gibbon on helium, Wed 17 Oct 2012, 12:15, closed)

You can get the serial ones to work on XP at least
but it involves hacking the drivers - I got some official instructions from Wacom a while back on how to do it. Have yet to get around to working out if you can do the same thing on 7.
( chthonic, Wed 17 Oct 2012, 11:41, closed)

You can on 32 bit with a dreadful hack, 64 bit can be made to work occasionally if you're really lucky.
( smaggers Like a gibbon on helium, Wed 17 Oct 2012, 12:07, closed)