OLED dot matrix display life?

[rsjsouza]

When dinosaurs roamed the earth, plasma screens were one (then) promising alternative for portable computing: the Toshiba T3100 was one of them. IIRC you could choose any color, as long as it was orange.

[james_s]

I really wish somebody made a 19-20" 4:3 color plasma display, that would be fantastic as a replacement for worn out CRT displays in arcade games. LCD monitors look like crap in those.

[Fraser]

I own a logicube F-Sonix hard disk duplicator that uses an OLED display. You see a lot of these on eBay “sold as seen - untested” The reason is most have a failed display by now, including mine  The display fails to black on most of these units, with no sign of life left in it. The Electronics are working, it is the display that dies.

I wanted to change the OLED display to an LCD equivalent but my knowledge of the display driver chips used on OLED displays and any compatibility between OLED and LCD driver chip protocols is zilch  Does anyone have experience of trying to fit a LCD display in place of an OLED type without having to change the firmware driving the display ? There is, of course, the possibility that the Logicube uses a custom display and driver but it would be interesting to know whether there is any compatibility across the two technologies where the communications with the display are concerned.

Fraser

[james_s]

You're going to have to open it up and get a picture of the display in order for anyone to guess what it is. There is no clue visible from the face of the display. It's very possible that it is some completely standard off the shelf display.

[Fraser]

James_s

Yes, I completely agree. I was wondering whether anyone had experience in terms of the driver chips used on the OLED displays and whether any compatibility is known to exist between the two technologies when it comes to driving them. I am happy to do the leg work analysing the Logicube display and signals going to it but if the two display technologies are known to use completely different command sets, I know not to bother asking my time 

I will dig out the Logicube and extract it’s display for some pictures

Fraser

[amyk]

There are definitely OLED and LCD controllers that use almost the same command set. You'll need either a part number on the display or logic analyser captures of the signals to figure out what it is.

[TheMG]

LCD displays need a backlight, and work poorly in low temps so in some cases may need heating.

I guess low temperature operation just isn't much of a consideration for manufacturers of such small general purpose displays.

But it is definitely possible to make LCD displays that perform reasonably well is extreme cold temperatures. They are found in virtually every vehicle manufactured in the last few years. They do get a little sluggish at -40 but still perfectly usable for the display of general information and controls.

[rsjsouza]

Fraser, if you locate your unit, take a good look at its display and see if it matches one of the units mentioned in the long OLED/multimeter thread at:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/replacing-oled-screen-on-an-agilent-u1253a-multimeter/250/

[peter-h]

There is not a lot in the TFT area, unless you are happy with very slow to update ones like this

https://www.mouser.co.uk/datasheet/2/127/ediptft32-ae-1165627.pdf

That one is 10 years old, from Germany. Very slow SPI speed - 200kHz. No chance of building anything with moving graphics with that.

Then there is this slightly newer one, from Australia

https://www.mouser.co.uk/datasheet/2/451/4DLCD-32320240-Spec-V1.0-update_20180710-1608278.pdf

but no SPI speed spec that I can find.

It doesn't look like a lot of firms work in this field. Maybe the Chinese own that market, but Mouser doesn't sell "cheap stuff"