Having trouble with a VFD2041-V-E

dVs · Post by **dVs** » Tue Apr 30, 2002 2:23 am

I just recieved this beautiful VFD the other day and i am hitting a little snag. When i have it hooked up to power AND a serial port, I get random 'stuff' on the display immediatly after powering up, even before my pc can post. However if I remove the serial cable and only give it power, it boots up perfectly fine and i get a nice blinking cursor in the corner. As far as I've read, the serial cable is just a plain old straight thru rs232. I'm using my internal com port header so it doesn't have to loop outside the machine. I've hooked up my "other brand" display the same way and it was fine, but I just had to get the super nifty VFD.

If anyone has experienced similar problems, or know how to fix it, please lemmie know.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dVs on 2002-04-30 02:24 ]</font>

dVs · Post by **dVs** » Tue Apr 30, 2002 3:16 pm

I tried a few new things today. I rigged it into my other machine real quick to see what would happen. I disconnected my C**********z dieplay and hooked up the MO one and it booted up fine without the crap. my FREEMETER program didn't display correctly, but thats ok, the MO demo program and LCD SMARTIE 5 worked perfectly. Ok, so I know the display itself is fine, but I still can't figure out exactly why it doesn't work in my main system. Could it be a VFD vs LCD issue, or maybe a internal com header/cable issue? I've used the com header and cable before without power on problems, but not with a VFD. I'm going to go pick up an external serial cable to see if that changes anything becuase I gotta stop by the hardware store anyway to get more split loom and spiral wrap. I'll post any findings i get for anyone who may be having the same problem as me.

Here are my critial system specs:

AUSS p4s333 motherboard
400watt power supply
db9 to 9pin serial header cable
correctly modified power cable (i check many times over)
lian-li pc-65 case

dVs · Post by **dVs** » Wed May 01, 2002 9:35 am

Anyone?

Post by **Henry** » Thu May 02, 2002 9:28 am

the only thing I can think of is this. Doring booting some computers (expecialy with a MS OS) will spit garbage out the serial ports. My questions is this, can you make the VFD work after booting with all the garbage on the screen?

dVs · Post by **dVs** » Thu May 02, 2002 11:35 am

Yea it works after it boots up, but what i was saying is that I get the stuff on the screen immediatly at powerup. even before anything boots. Curious if I'm the only one that has this problem. Semi-defective display?

santa · Post by **santa** » Thu May 02, 2002 12:42 pm

It might be diagnostic signals being send to the serial port. Like port 80 diagnostic on motherboards... My old abit kt7a-raid had that "feature".

Post by **Henry** » Thu May 02, 2002 12:51 pm

I have to agree with Santa on that one.. like I said, some OSs or Mobos will do this. I have a computer here that does it.. nothing we can do about that.

dVs · Post by **dVs** » Thu May 02, 2002 1:56 pm

ok, cool. thanx for the info. I guess it could be because the internal port doubles as an ir header if you set it up as such in the bios and it sends some commands at power up.