I have been looking up ways to use my gutted IPad 2's old LCD as another monitor. I read somewhere that the LCD's ribbon cable shares a protocol with DisplayPort, which could be useful. Does anyone know a good way to do this?

I'm pretty sure that's only on the iPad 3 and later. If the iPad still works, you could use a display extending program like splashtop

The one problem is the significant delay for frame throughput across a wireless network. If you were trying to connect it to a Mac, your chances of success sending frames through the wire would be much higher. But since I assume you're using Windows, your only real choice is VNC over wireless, unless you are the Hackerman who loves screwing around with libusb and proprietary Apple stuff... and even then, you'd still need a Mac to make the app.

Oh... it's just an LCD. It should use ordinary LVDS like in every other LCD. Not keen about the details though, you'll have to fish for the datasheet.

You misinterpret the question:

With some cursory searching it appears to be an eDP (embedded displayport) display, so it should be relatively easy to drive. For example, somebody's personal project to build a board that takes DisplayPort input with a power supply for backlight and drives ones of those displays, or pre-built units on eBay that take common PC inputs and drive eDP.

The most annoying part of driving this kind of display is dealing with the wiring- high-speed layout (as in the former) is tricky, and the flat-flex cables you have to work with (as in the latter as well as the former) are by no means robust. What you propose is entirely doable though.

I do believe only the Retina (iPad 3 or later) has an eDP interface, but pre-Retina uses standard LVDS. The rationale behind this is that there was really no need to create a new interface for a cheap, mass-produced LCD that already worked with a standard speed and resolution. However, when Apple introduced these super-high-DPI LCDs, there was a need to move forward in display interface standards.