stuart wrote: > ...I know they're not common, but I paid something less than $20 > US for a Vacuum Florescent Display...
Not common? VFDs were quite commonly used as point-of-sale (POS) displays, along side cash registers. I picked up one on eBay a few years ago for about that price. Nicely packaged, with power supply and serial interface. Most are made by IEE. I though that's what the external display options in mvpmc were designed for. Back in the early '90's I had a similar surplus VFD made by Cherry Semiconductor without the nice packaging that I stuck in a box in my living room and controlled it from a computer a few rooms away via serial. > ...which came w/a Atmel uP. The guy that designed it (Dale Wheat I think) > for BGMicro actually had the foresight to populate the board with the > programming interface connector. So, there's most of the HW that I need > in a small package for not much money. There you go. You just need to add some IR hardware to it, and figure out how to write the software for the Atmel MCU. But buying one of those "smart" serial controllers might be worth the expense, when you consider the effort required to write the software. > The IBM PowerPC is of a BGA type mount (Ball Grid Array). ... > In short I think you will have trouble accessing extra, if > any, pins. There's always the pins used for the serial port, if you end up not using it. > Plus, I don't think I have see any documentation w.r.t. pin > functions... Unless it is a custom part, that info should be obtainable from IBM. How did the serial port come to be discovered? >>> Adding a 40KHz oscillator would reduce the IBM PowerPC processor load >>> to only modulating the IR LED. But this would complicate the >>> hardware modification. >> >> I'd take a look at how this was accomplished on other projects that >> integrate IR with computers. The LIRC community probably has tons on >> info on this. > > Regardless, it does off load the uP and can probably be done using one > chip (the common and cheap 7400 NAND schmidt trigger gates come to mind). Agreed. But the point was that the LIRC community would likely have dealt with this issue already and be able to advise whether you can get away with doing the modulation in software, or if it is necessary to use hardware. That community would probably have plenty of info on the other IR related questions you raised as well. -Tom ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Mvpmc-users mailing list Mvpmc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mvpmc-users mvpmc wiki: http://mvpmc.wikispaces.com/
