Help with 2x16 on parallel port???

whitebakecase · Post by **whitebakecase** » May 11th, 2006, 2:23 pm

my 2x16 lcd is displaying the correct information, in the wrong places, ive tried the timing thingy as advised on these forums, but it makes no difference, I'm getting the right text but its as though its just being positioned randomly, sometimes the second line text appears on the first line, sometimes i get second line text on both lines but in different places, I can see the transitions working etc but lcdsmartie simply wont display it correctly, the only spftware that does it correctly is a demo app in C+ which i found whilst trawling the net, works absolutely perfectly but doesnt do as much as lcdsmartie, i sometimes find i have to initialise the display with the working app in order to make LCDsmartie work at all... I'm baffled, any ideas??? can get photos if it helps

Post by **limbo** » May 11th, 2006, 7:38 pm

which diagram have you used for wirings?

whitebakecase · Post by **whitebakecase** » May 12th, 2006, 6:01 pm

http://www.beyondlogic.org/parlcd/parlcd.htm

think its pretty generic

whitebakecase · Post by **whitebakecase** » May 12th, 2006, 6:02 pm

although have to say if my wiring was wrong, how comes there is an application which works it ok? unless its primarily for that software, although i cant see any diffrernce???

_X7JAY7X_ · Post by **_X7JAY7X_** » May 12th, 2006, 8:30 pm

If the wiring was wrong, it probably would mess up on characters too. You use all of the data lines to write a character, so why does it work for charcters but not for addressing (LCD placement). That is strange. Did you double check that you have the correct LCD size set in Smartie?

J

whitebakecase · Post by **whitebakecase** » May 13th, 2006, 1:27 am

yeh the program is set up correctly as far as i can see, i must admit i'm not blaming the software i'm more suspicious its something ive done, but never the less i am baffled that one of the utilities i have downloaded actuelly runs the display perfectly??? i have noticed some corruption in the display, appears every time the program displays a space i get an upside down "@" before the space...?

Post by **caesar** » May 15th, 2006, 8:10 am

I suspect that is it the R/W line that you have connected to ground. As far as I know LCDSmartie uses this line to check if the display is ready/busy. If you tie it to ground Smartie always sees the display ready and sends data. The other application you mentioned probably wayts longer before sending data as it doesn't check for availability of the display.

Try connecting the R/W line!

whitebakecase · Post by **whitebakecase** » May 23rd, 2006, 12:49 am

what pin do I need to connect to on the parallel port? from what I can gather, because this channel is rarely used, theres no specific parallel pin to use?

Post by **caesar** » May 23rd, 2006, 1:03 pm

You should use the circuits shown on LCDSmartie's site:
http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/circuits.htm
In those circuits the R/W line is connected to LPT pin 14.
Good luck!

onTheJDAR · Post by **onTheJDAR** » June 1st, 2006, 8:43 am

I also have positional issues with a parallel 2x16 VFD. As far as wiringgoes, I would hope that it is fine, because it came pre-wired with my Ahanix DVine4 HTPC case.

My problem is that most of the time the text changes on the VFD, one or more characters are repeated. They are not repeated on the LCD Smartie display (of course).

I have tried changing the timing, and have set my parallel BIOS options to normal. I am not really sure what may be causing this.

All I have been able to do is freeze the text. Then, I get a static, but working, message.

My system is a 3Ghz P4 on an Asus P4C800E. It is running Windows XP SP2.

Any help would be appreciated.

Jordan

Post by **limbo** » June 2nd, 2006, 7:41 pm

Posted: 01 06 2006 09:43:37 am Post subject: Similar Problems

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I also have positional issues with a parallel 2x16 VFD. As far as wiringgoes, I would hope that it is fine, because it came pre-wired with my Ahanix DVine4 HTPC case.

My problem is that most of the time the text changes on the VFD, one or more characters are repeated. They are not repeated on the LCD Smartie display (of course).

I have tried changing the timing, and have set my parallel BIOS options to normal. I am not really sure what may be causing this.

All I have been able to do is freeze the text. Then, I get a static, but working, message.

My system is a 3Ghz P4 on an Asus P4C800E. It is running Windows XP SP2.

Take a look here:http://www.lansley.co.uk/forum/phpBB2/v ... .php?t=682

I suggest to take a look on the wirings before you try anything else

onTheJDAR · Post by **onTheJDAR** » June 2nd, 2006, 9:34 pm

I haven't had a chance to check my wiring ye, though as I said, it came pre-wired to a parallel port by Ahanix and it specified that you should use LCD Smartie, so it should work, I guess. I did do more research on Ahanix's support pages (looking for wiring schematics) and found that I should set the parallel port BIOS setting to EPP. I had previously set it to normal, after hearing about success here by doing just that. I have switched to EPP, and things seem to be working.

I still get some characters doubled (when I use the big-nums plug-in on a time function, it doubles chars about once every 10 seconds), but I am very satisfied I can finally get it to work. I love using the wmp plug-in for it, thanks Limbo.

Jordan

Help with 2x16 on parallel port???

Help with 2x16 on parallel port???

Similar Problems

Better Perfomance