VFD 2x20 Driver and Scroll Problem

engineerpower · Post by **engineerpower** » January 16th, 2008, 6:09 am

Hello World~

I've had a BG Micro ACS1375 2x20 VFD that I've had for several years. I can get it to run just fine with the VFDThinger program, but it's functionality is somewhat limited. I can get LCDSmartie to display info IFF I use the test driver, and I am experiencing some problems with scrolling. The top and bottom lines will inch past each other one cell at a time and display the same information. Sometimes, it looks like the display is sectioned off into 4 corners which scroll independently of each other.

I've read through the forum for a couple of hours now and haven't seen anything that helps with this. Does anyone have a driver for this or knows how to adjust the test driver to correct this problem?

Thanks for looking =D

engineerpower · Post by **engineerpower** » January 17th, 2008, 4:12 pm

This last post was with a serial setup. I spent some time wiring up a parallel cords last night and got some different results. I was using the HD44780 driver and depending on how I set the timing multiplier, I will either get repeated/missing letters or the top line works fine but the bottom line will be blank except for the last box which will act like an additional box for the top line. I pretty much have a 1x20 + 1x1 where I should be having a 2x20. Any insight here?

Also, is there any documentation on setup parameters or commands for the test driver? I'm pretty much playing with random settings or trying whatever (not much) that I can dig up on the forum.

Thanks for any help, guys.

Post by **mattcro** » January 17th, 2008, 10:57 pm

The only real documentation for the test driver is here: http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/testdriver.html

There have been a few posts about BGmicro LCDs/VFDs - if you haven't already done so, do a forum search with a few different keywords. I have no experience with these modules...

As for parallel port issues, some people have big problems with corruption and others have no problems at all... not sure what causes this, but it may depend on the exact parallel port hardware (chipset, PCI card etc) and what other drivers (especially legacy printer/scanner drivers) happen to be active. It's a bit of suck-it-and-see with port settings etc!

engineerpower · Post by **engineerpower** » January 18th, 2008, 2:51 pm

Well, I think I'm done fiddling with this then. I spent a lot of time searching through the forum and came up with a whole lotta nothing. I pulled the plug on parrallel and went back to serial, which I got working just fine with LCDC. They've got the functionality I've been looking for, so I think I'm just going to stick with them.

So, for the sake of all the other people like me, LCDC (http://www.lcdc.cc/) supports the 2x20 BG Micro VFD. Install the program, load the IEE VFD definition file, and run with it. It has everything I was looking for and more.

Thanks anywayz.