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Need help finding info on Futuba VFD display.
XOIIO:
So, Dave's video on hacking VFD's came up again, and I'm hoping I might be able to find a datasheet for the display and save me the trouble of reverse engineering it, but so far no luck. I had actually posted about these some time ago looking for ideas but they just slipped my mind.
It's made by the Futuba corp, one number is JCI-D1S but that doesn't bring anything up. The model number which brings up a lot is M402SD06AA, however I have not found any datasheets or useful information on them (and on one site selling them, they are listed as hard drives, what???)
Anyways, I was hoping some of the more resourceful might be able to find some info on these, a pinout, the communication protocol, anything. I'm going to keep looking for a bit but it's been a pretty long day.
Edit: Alright, come up pretty much completely dry, so I sent off an email to futuba using the form on their website, hopefully they can actually provide a datasheet or something as I can't even find this model number listed anywhere on it.
The main chip seems to be custom, the only decent information I can find links to this, which further links to a blog by some german guy, but doesn't actually show/explain the connection on the one that I have, though he did get it working from the looks of it. http://lists.omnipotent.net/pipermail/lcdproc/2006-May/010844.html
edit 2: oh man, to make things worse, the board is conformally coated. So much for checking the IC pins for common ground and power, I don't have any good ways of removing that which wouldn't risk damage to them.
XOIIO:
Alright, so the conformal coating didn't work so well on vias and long leads, and I managed to find the power bus, and get it powered up, which gives a blinking cursor.
Now the question is if this is serial, parallel, or both, because on the Futuba website it seems that they have both available, maybe on the same unit.
Unfortunately as you can see, this uses a quad flat pack, and the pins for the connector are under the vfd itself, so no easy access to trace those out.
The nice thing is these only need 5v, granted at 500ma or so, but still, pretty good. I can power this and the arduino pro mini that will be powering them from one supply.
If I was designing it that one odd one out underneath the grounds seems like it might be a good spot for the reset pin but aside from that, I don't have anything else at this point.
mojoe:
It's good that you got a blinking cursor. That means that you definitely have a display with some smarts on it. I have some VFD's that have no processor on them.
Can you find a datasheet on any Futaba that has a similar 26-pin connector? My guess would be that your display is both serial and parallel.
XOIIO:
--- Quote from: mojoe on March 17, 2016, 02:29:37 pm ---It's good that you got a blinking cursor. That means that you definitely have a display with some smarts on it. I have some VFD's that have no processor on them.
Can you find a datasheet on any Futaba that has a similar 26-pin connector? My guess would be that your display is both serial and parallel.
--- End quote ---
I looked at similar model number ones but there isn't much luck on datasheets for these at all it seems. I'll have to do some more searching. If this accepted serial input that would be fantastic as I haven't dealt with parallel before, and typing the binary in to get it to display anything would kind of suck lol
XOIIO:
I looked for some 40 x 2 displays and found this, not very helpful, but it seems they have some which are directly compatible with the hitachi LCD controllers, man, that would be absolutely perfect if mine did that as well.
No real info or even hint at the connector type though.
http://www.futaba.com/products/display_modules/lcd_emulator/products/details/vfd07.asp
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