SUCCESS!!!!

After changing from the Atmel 8515 to the Mega16 (and fixing a bent pin) everything works great!!!

Thanks so much for all the support. You guys are awesome! I'm glad the problem was on my end, and nothing wrong with the VFD unit.

THIS THING ROCKS!

any ideas on how i can fix this? right now it's a $100 paper weight.

adjusted both to 9600 baud. got same 1 character on vfd per character transmitted, but they are cryptic looking characters.

:D Limited Success! I soldered across the 3 TTL jumps, then restarted my uC, and I had characters appear on my display! The problem is, they were all garbage characters. :cry: I modified the uC code to just clear the screen ( 254 88 ), and I got 1 character appear on the display. An 'A' with 2 dots ...

Well, I don't really know what TTL is, and that may be part of the problem. The manual says that "Three modifications have to be made." but doesn't go into detail. Is it just soldering across the jumps? Does this have to be done to communicate with the uC directly thru the power header pin...

OK. This is driving me crazy. :evil: Here's what I've done so far: Sample C++ from my PC to VFD: int APIENTRY WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) { DCB dcb; HANDLE hCom; hCom = CreateFile("COM1",GENERIC_READ|GENERIC_WRITE,0,NULL,OPEN_EXISTIN...

Using Windows apps, the easiest way to write to the LCD on COM1 (that I have done), is just open COM1 as a file, and write your bytes to the file. The only trick is that you have to open it with GENERIC_READ|GENERIC_WRITE, and OPEN_EXISTING flags. Here's a "Hello World" that I did when I g...

Excellent. I will go home and gather the info with pics and sample code. I'm sure I'm doing something stupid. I'm just not sure what that is! Thanks for your help. Will get back with the info!

I set the jumpers above the DB9 to the RS-232 side like the image at the top of page 10 in the manual (VFD2041_02.pdf). Then i connected wires to the Tx/Rx pins on the power header to the Tx/Rx pins on my uC development board.

:x I changed flow control to none. i still can't get my VFD to respond. also, when I hook up the Rx/Tx wires between the +5V/Gnd wires, my VFD screen goes haywire! When I unplug the wires, it stops. When I plug the wires in to my development board, it prints crazy characters repeatedly. The funny th...

Also, shouldn't the DB9 provide a good ground to the development board and display? or is there something else i have to do?

Exactly. I took the DB9 out from my Microcontroller, into COM2 on my PC, and watched the data with HyperTerminal. Then I took the DB9 off of my PC, and into the back of the VFD, and it did not respond at all. My HyperTerminal settings were 19200 baud, 8N1, with Hardware flow control. Could that be t...

I'm an experienced programmer, but new to microcontrollers. The VFD display was suppposed to be the easy part of my project, but I am having one hell of a time! I bought the VFD2041 to match the display in the dashboard of my Corvette. Using a DB9 from the computer, the display works perfectly. I wr...