I’ve spotted an auction for some nice-looking Vacuum Fluorescent Displays on Ebay, but the seller’s information says he will strictly only sell to buyers in the USA.
If anyone in the States would like to bid on a pair for me (and snap up the rest while you’re at it if you like ;D ), I could airmail you a US dollar money order for the cost and shipping, or Paypal if I get it sorted out soon…
I have written to the seller asking for compatibility information and if I can bid, but I have had no reply. I’ll take that as a “No”…
The auction listings are here: NB the first two finish today, and the last one in two days time.
It appears the first group I listed are the Noritake T-Series. The thread I linked above suggests that the U-Series are the Hitachi compatible ones. So unless I hear otherwise I will skip these and wait for some compatible ones to come up.
Precisely right. Nortake U series is HD44780 compatible (with a few minor differences, I assume you’ve checked out the datasheet) and apparently the “W” models are a subset of this line as well.
The “T” series are totally different, however…
EDIT:
Here’s a note on the differences between the “U” version and standard HD44780:
“The VFD instructions are very similar to a standard parallel data LCD except for the data line addresses, which have different values.”
And brightness is controlled via software, don’t have any idea what impact this has on the MIOS LCD code…
So like a schmuck, I checked the above links, they are no longer valid, probably because they are dated from five years ago..
What I CAN tell you is that I use Noritake/Itron 2X20 VFD displays in all my projects.
The specific part I use is CU20025ECPB-U1J. I have a PDF data sheet available if anyone wants it.
They are definitely MIOS compatible, and you can see one in the pics I have posted for the MBMixer project.
Some differences from “standard” LCDs:
These use a bit more power than an LCD, so check your regulator heatsink.
These do not use the brightness or contrast controls from the core, but as noted above you can control brightness from the code. I think there are 16 levels available.
I have also written 4 bit code for other projects. I have not tested the 4 bit MIOS code, but I doubt there would be any problem.
The displays I have include the vertical bars needed for the bargraph display mode of MBMixer level settings. I don’t know how common those are, but the docs describe what and where these special characters are.
