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You might want to make sure that your aluminum-foil cap is on tight. They can sniff out your password even easier directly from your brain.
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That said... This is in the end, a message board. The worst thing that could happen would be that someone posts as you and maybe locks ...

Hmm.... About 12 years ago I wrote some DOS softare for DHL that would print out shipping labels on a dot-matrix printer. If they are still using that they sure got their money's worth - that's for sure.

Of course, I'm not a professional programmer so I guess they really did get what they paid for ...

I'm not an engineer, more of a tech. I can build one from a board drawing, probably and maybe from a schematic. Depends on the complexity. For me, I'm only going to have the free time 'till Oct 21st. I have to travel again, then.

Stig, if you can put up a good pcb drawing I'll build one. I've got ...

Stig, you seem to know how it could be done. Can you draw up some schematics? I'd be willing to build it and let ya know what blew up.

The guy I was going to ask at work quit so I'm kinda at a standstill because I don't really know the other engineers anyway.

Yeah. I saw your cool plugin. The only problem is that I'd need another serial port to use that. I've only got two serial ports on my box and one is used by the lcd, and one by my palm pilot.

The velleman ir receiver and remote are a matched set. It says it will work with other remotes but i'm ...

I'm still not sure if it's as easy as it looks... I think the open collector outputs will work just like a switch would... If that's the case then i'm going to buy one and give it a shot... Like I said, I'm just not sure if it'll work. Heh.

LCDC doesn't actually run as a service. You can use other software like AtYourService or FireDaemon to make it kinda run as a service but it still won't start 'till Windows is pretty much up and running.

As far as setting the state of the GPO's when the display is first powered on I believe you're ...

There are plenty of 'security' locks that are activated by an electronic signal. A guy down the hall in the dorms when I was in college rigged one up to his door and used a car remote (from an alarm) to lock/unlock his door.

There is a program called change.zip on http://www.matrixorbital.com/downloads.htm that should let you change the intro screen. It says it works with LK202-25's. As far as the initial state of the GPO's, I believe you're out of luck as to an easy fix.

Look around where you live for an electronics shop. If there is a university near maybe call the EE dept and find out where to buy 'project boxes' and other components.

You might need to buy some tools, like a razor knife, wire cutters, soldering iron.. etc.. Depends on exactly what you want to do ...

The only display with 'high power' GPOs is the LK204-25PC. It's GPO's are 12v and supply around one amp. All the other display's GPOs are 5v and milliamps. Suitable for LED's but anything bigger would have to use a relay or transistor.

If you want a VFD then the closest you can get is the VK204-25 which is a 4 line 20 character VFD with 6 GPO's.

I've got an LCD but I really like the way the VFD's look and the fact that you can somewhat change their color just by using filters - easy.

Have fun.

Well Henry, you've got a bin of displays and spare parts to pull out of if you blow yours up. :smile: I knew that the GPO's can supply more than the 750ma that they are rated for but I was being conservative and quoting the rating instead of what it can actually do.

Here is a link to 'overclocking ...

Yeah. The GPO's on the LK204-25PC can supply 'only' around 750ma and 12v. If what you want to power off of 'em needs more juice you'll need to use a relay or transformer. The relay or transformer would be activated by the GPO and would switch power you supplied via your power supply or whatever.

I think using a basic stamp or other microcontroller is the wrong way to go. I know people have used them to control the display but that's not really what you want to do.

If you just want more GPO's then there are a couple ways to go. First off.. 8 GPO's is a lot. Using a relay or transformer ...