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PostPosted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 10:12 pm 
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Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2005 9:31 pm
Posts: 11
Location: San Francisco
Hi

I recently installed 5A16 on a Ahanix D-vine case with a green VFD display. It plugs into the parrellel port and I read in one of the lists that it is a HD44780 device. I have been playing around trying to get it to do something but haven't gotten it to light up yet. Does anyone have any tips?

- I set all LCD display check boxes options in the myth front end setup.

- I set the display in /etc/LCDd.conf to "Driver=HD44780" from "Driver=none".

- I have the process /usr/sbin/LCDd -s -f -c /etc/LCDd.conf running as user nobody.

I don't get anything when I restart the mythfront end. There are a couple of example scripts in /usr/share/doc/lcdproc/examples/ but I'm not smart enough to kick them off.

As you can probably tell from this post I'm pretty new to this stuff, so I apologize in advance for any poor etiquette.

Thanks,
-marc


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PostPosted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 12:25 am 
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Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2004 3:23 am
Posts: 159
Location: Friesland, The Netherlands
I have the same VFD display. I got it to work by recompiling 0.4.5 from source. Somehow I couldn't get the Debian version from apt (0.4.3-10 in my case) working.
Here's the HD44780 section of my LCDd.conf:
Code:
[HD44780]
# Hitachi HD44780 driver
# See docs/hd44780_howto.txt

Port=0x378
# Port where the LPT is. Usual values are 0x278, 0x378 and 0x3BC

ConnectionType=winamp
# Select what type of connection. See documentation for types.

Keypad=no
# If you have a keypad connected. Keypad layout is currently not
# configureable from the config file.

Backlight=no
# If you have a switchable backlight.

Size=16x2
# Specifies the size of the LCD.
# In case of multiple combined displays, this should be the total size.

#vspan=1,2
# For multiple displays: at what 'logical' lines do the individual displays
# start.

#extended=yes
# If you want to use more than 3 HD44780 controllers on the LPT, you need to
# specify this. See documentation.

#DelayMult=2
# If your display is slow and cannot keep up with the flow of data from
# LCDd, garbage can appear on the LCDd. Set this delay factor to 2 or 4
# to increase the delays. Default: 1.

DelayBus=true
# You can reduce the inserted delays by setting this to false.
# On fast PCs it is possible your LCD does not respond correctly.
# Default: true.

#Device=/dev/ttyS0
# For PIC-an-LCD connection type only: the serial device to which the LCD
# is connected. Default: /dev/lcd


I believe the ConnectionType=winamp is the key to success here. Another thing I had to change from the defaults is the number of characters and rows. It's been a while since I have set it up, but I believe that's all I had to do.


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PostPosted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 11:45 am 
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Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2005 9:31 pm
Posts: 11
Location: San Francisco
Thanks Willem,

I will try it tonight and report back.

-marc


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PostPosted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 11:23 pm 
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Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2005 9:31 pm
Posts: 11
Location: San Francisco
That did it. You are right setting "ConnectionType=winamp" made it light up. I also followed your advice and set the width to 16 from 20.

With 5A16 I did not need to reinstall/compile anything, it just lit up.

Thanks!!


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 9:22 am 
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Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2004 3:23 am
Posts: 159
Location: Friesland, The Netherlands
Good to hear you got it to work. The winamp thing basically tells which pinout on the parallel port is used.
It is a very nice addition to an already cool looking case. Unfortunately there is a small bug that shows a L in the top left corner when displaying titles, but that's not a big issue. Probably will be solved some time.


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 3:55 pm 
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Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2005 9:31 pm
Posts: 11
Location: San Francisco
It's very impressive looking, even my wife was a little impressed. I haven't noticed the L yet in my version, but I just started playing with it. It looked like I may have a synchronization problem, when I browsed music quickly it seemed fall behind and not catch up. But I still have some experimenting to do. My hope is that can use it to browse music without turning the TV.

-marc.


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PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 2:04 pm 
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Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:05 am
Posts: 160
Location: Ipswich, UK
I've been trying to get my LCD device working, and I'm running out of ideas, no matter what I do it just sits there with two bars across the screen.

It's an HD44780 based 20x4 blue/white device:
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=25#p2406

I've tested it today on a windows laptop and it works fine on there, and I've been through everything on here (short of recompiling, as it's already at version 0.4.5)

The one thing I'm noticing is that when I start the frontend, it gives this message:
2005-09-25 20:58:17.614 Could not connect to LCDd: connection refused.

I've manually run LCDd from an xterm, and then mythfrontend gives these messages:
lcddevice: WARNING: Something is getting passed to LCDd that it doesn't understand
lcddevice: Connection to LCDd died unexpectedly. Trying to reconnect every 10 seconds. . .

I've been trying to find answers on the LCDproc site, but found nothing yet.

Has anyone seen this before?

Mephi


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:44 am 
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Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2004 3:23 am
Posts: 159
Location: Friesland, The Netherlands
Perhaps something is claiming the parallel port? Maybe some process is polling for a printer? Try to stop as many processes as possible and start LCDd interactively again see how that goes.


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 11:58 am 
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Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:05 am
Posts: 160
Location: Ipswich, UK
I'm getting to the poing where I think my parallel port is broken.

I put windows on an old spare hard drive, and fired up the LCD program that I tested on the laptop, and nothing happens...

Does anyone know if there's parallel port issues with the NF2 motherboards? (Specifically the abit NF7-S)

And does anyone know if the plug and play PCI Parallel port cards work under Linux?

Mephi


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 8:29 pm 
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Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:18 pm
Posts: 1422
Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
You may want to check what you have your parallel port set to in the BIOS. This will effect the speed and possibly the communication to the port.

If set to an early standard (Normal/SPP) you may find that the port is not set to bi-directional mode, meaning that data can go out, but nothing comes back. If you can set it to ECP/EPP as these are bi-directional protocols and will allow information to flow both ways.

Just a tip, hope it helps.

_________________
Girkers


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:08 am 
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Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:05 am
Posts: 160
Location: Ipswich, UK
I have tried changing it between spp/ecp/epp but not under windows, so I'll give that a go before forkingout for a parallel port card.

Mephi


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:20 pm 
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Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:15 pm
Posts: 288
I have a D.Vine 4 and I had enabled LCD display in the front end but I can't have any info from myThTv on the LCD.

I have tried /etc/LCDd -s -f and I can see letters on the LCD.
I stopped LCDd and now I can see "Thank you for using lcdproc+Linux" on the VFD.

So it works but I can't see infos from MythTV on the LCD.

Any idea?


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