I'll give the test app a go as I am getting somewhat frustrated. Speaking of this diagram ... for those of us that are not electronic gurus, that bridge in the diagram may be a bit confusing for some. I realized that D1 goes to DB1 from my 4*20 VFD experience. Though, I have read in other forums where peeps wired straight across. i.e. DB7 to D0 The diagram is not at fault... just not noob friendly.
i am also using a old printer port header from mb....the other end fits perfectly on the VFD... and all i got are also those orange lines... i got a friend of mine do the soldering...he's a pro, and i've checked million times, so shouldn't be a wiring problem... i am going to change my printer cable and see...
You can get COMDLG32.OCX from here: http://www.prokopski.org/vfd/COMDLG32.zip Just unzip into your windows\system32 directory and then run from the command line 'regsvr32 comdlg32.ocx' That should be everything you will need besides the DLPortIO stuff. If that doesnt work though, there is an setup package here: http://www.prokopski.org/vfd/BlinkenLights-NoritakeVFD-Setup.zip If you have any other problems... let me know.
This may really seem dumb (and probably is)... But after re-reading Linear's post of the wiring diagram again and again... I must not have looked too hard to the bottom of the post where he shows the pin outs of the parallel cable he built (i found in one of my parts bins a straight thru M-F DB35 cable so i used that) But are the pin-outs reversed by row from end to end? ie... 1 -> 13 and 2 -> 12 etc... or is my imagination running amok from too much reading? Could explain why things are hosed. As i've got everything wired straight thru to the para. port from the VFD, then all of the pin-outs are reversed. I'm at work now, although i admit i'd enjoy manufacturing an excuse to run home to try something. But i have a feeling i need to start warming up my boots for a firm kick in the tail end......
I dont want to get into an argument here, but I did not modify your work. I just wrote a program that had the same functionality. I wrote it orignally as a test app just to learn programming the VFD. Someone asked about a test app that used DLPortIO so I posted it to be helpful.
Okay, I agree with you there. I thought you were referring to the BlinkenLights application since you made no reference to the Liquid MP3 skins in the previous post. As you see from the website, I clearly state that the skins were based on your skin. I did not realize you needed to know about it before I posted them. I am sorry. If you would like, I can take them down. I just figured that some people would think they look neat and maybe want to use them.
Thanks, When I posted them I didn't even realize that you were the one who created the original for Liquid MP3. I thought the one that you posted on here was one you modified from Liquid MP3 to make it fit the screen better. Like I said before, I am sorry. I am not trying to start trouble, I am just trying to help contribute to the community around this VFD.
newbie here, can someone take an actual picture of their wired vfd? I think I can follow the instructions but an visual would be real nice. and the seller from ebay shorted me a display. and he doesn't have anymore in stock. sucks!
Ive finally gotten around to wiring my displays, but have a question I know that the parallel port does not supply enough power for the vfd, nor does the usb port. Is it possible to somehow wire it up so that you could use multiple ports to power it? a molex connector sticking out would kind of look pretty crappy
No, Combining them creates another problem althogther... Just run a tracer with the 5V down your parallel cable from your psu, close to the port (Could even snake it out where one of the screws goes...)
ok I've finished wiring it (using the liquid-mp3 wiring), and just installed the winamp plugin The screen that shows up on the vfd is somewhat garbled, and the layout changes everytime I stop and restart the plugin. by garbled I mean well, just messed up, like columns or rows that dont display anything, the window out of place, somethings squished or elongated. Im 90% sure that I wired everything up right, so Im thinkin theres some sort of software conflict can anyone help me? edit: I went into BIOS and changed the parallel port settings to ECP + EPP and it seems to work fine now, I guess it didnt like SPP
It seems DLPortIO 'talks' to the parallelport in a different than WinIO does. On my forum, justin posted he could run the demo's from Henri (using WinIO) fine, but LiQuiD-MP3 (using DLPortIO) didn't work. After changing the port settings in the BIOS it worked fine. This info might help some people solve their display problems edit: I just saw that Dyne confirms this in his post above.
Source Code Any chance of getting you to post the Source Code? Also which wiring scheme did you use? Thanks Jonathan
Re: Source Code I used the Liquid MP3 wiring but it would not be hard to modify it to use the other wiring. I will try to post the source code this evening but I am warning you its pretty ugly. (atleast the blinkenlights specific stuff, the actual communication with the VFD is pretty straightforward).
