So I got my new VFD!

Amorya · Post by **Amorya** » Thu Dec 25, 2003 12:43 pm

Today I was finally able to play with my new VFD (VK-204-25). So far, I've not done anything particularly adventurous with it. Most of my time was spent locating a suitable power supply and building an adaptor with the correct cable at the end. There was a heart-stopping moment when I first powered it up and nothing happened save a faint hum (I really thought I'd fried it), but the next time I tried it worked like a dream. (I'm not using my VFD inside a computer, so power wasn't as easily available

)

The text is really clear, even more than the photos show. I'm not sure as yet whether I prefer it with or without the blue filter that I bought. Certainly the writing is a lot less green than I feared - it's basically white with a hint of green.

I've only really played with it in Hyperterminal so far. And in that, I'm not entirely sure how to send the various control codes, so I've only tried text. Next I'm going to break out QBasic and see if I can code up something useful for it to do. (Yeah, I know, it's not a real programming language, etc, etc. But it'll do for now, and it's built into Windows 3.1, which is important. Mebbe I'll graduate to PHP or C sometime.)

Amorya

Brillig · Post by **Brillig** » Sun Dec 28, 2003 6:50 pm

So, you are running Windows 3.1? Did I hear that right?

Well since you are using a pre-windows98 MS OS, you will find that talking to the serial port is pretty easy (you can access registers directly) and BASIC should work fine. Only thing is that the methods you will use will not really translate well to the "modern world", though experience is experience and it's all good

Best of luck!

Amorya · Post by **Amorya** » Mon Dec 29, 2003 7:26 am

You did hear that right... but don't worry - I'm not talking about my main computers here!

I have two Mac laptops, a G3 and a G4. But I don't want to connect the display up to a laptop, because I don't want to leave them on all the time. So I dug out the oldest computer I had lying around... it's not as if driving an LCD needs much processing power, after all!

I guess I could update it to Windows 95, but I don't really think it's worth it.

Amorya