HP Digital Media Center VFD display driver

[hazardsneon]

I have an HP z556 Digital Entertainment Center PC that is currently running win7 64-bit.

It has a sweet VFD display with multi-media icons and text. Also mulit-media buttons on the front panel that currently have no 64-bit driver and are not completely operational anymore.

LCD smartie seems like it would be a perfect front end solution to get the display and buttons working with my system and add functionality that didn't previously exist.

What I would like to do is create a driver for the OEM front panel that will work with LCD smartie.

This is probably going to be far from easy but I am looking for advice on where to start.

I am planning on buying a setup to do investigation without tearing into my currently running machine unless people tell me that this is next to impossible.

So, what would I need to do on the LCD smartie side to write a driver?

Also, does anyone have any ideas on software or hardware to "snoop" on the USB port or controlling software to see what it might be doing to talk with the display?

What I am planning on doing is setting up a 32-bit virtual box, probably win7, installing the OEM drivers to get it working. Then look at what it is doing to write to the display and read buttons.

[dperrow]

You might be better to see if you can get a specification for the PCs by googling for it.

Writing a driver isn't too difficult if you can program.

Snooping the usb can be done but it will be difficult to understand.

[hazardsneon]

So, I'm pretty certain that I'm going to forgo the USB snooping and working with entirely factory hardware. Instead I'm going to invest my time in creating a module to replace part of the factory hardware and control with LCD smartie.

I found that someone had taken VFD display that is in my HTPC, hacked it and made an arduino library to run it.
forum.arduino.cc/index.php/topic,56534.0.html <- This would have been a link but it says it looks to spamy for a new user

So now I will know how to write to the display.

I bought the VFD display and the control board for it.

There is one big dip socket Cypress IC that had USB and controls the display, 6 LEDs and 5 buttons. I've mapped out the pins and will be making a drop in module that will plug into the dip socket.

The module will most likely be based on an Atmel atmega32u4 because of the native USB and I've worked with it in the past.

Wish me luck as I forge ahead, to me, the hardware will be the easy part, the firmware, driver, and plugin will be challenging.