Matrix Orbital Corp

I just received my VK204-24-USB and was playing around with it using "LCD Tester" (Windows). After a while, it seemed to be doing some weird things, so I powered off my machine and turned it back on to see if that would clear the problem. It obviously didn't, because the startup screen ended up looking pretty much like this:



Has the device gotten into some wierd "reverse" mode that I could reset, or is it just broken?

Can you still communicate to the display? What types of weird behaviour was the unit exhibiting before you powered it off?

Miles wrote:Can you still communicate to the display?

Yes and no. Although LCD Tester can talk to it enough to get information about it (capabilities, etc.), and some things seem to work, I can't tell if it is accurate.

What types of weird behaviour was the unit exhibiting before you powered it off?

At first, it was just that text output would add an extra blank line if it auto-wrapped. Then, output text would appear in seemingly random locations, although after watching for a while it seemed there was a pattern. If I cleared the screen and output a text string, the first character appeared in the last column of the first row, while the second character appeared in the last column of the second row, the 3rd character was in the first column of the first row, and the 4th character was in the first column of the second row. Then, the rest of the string either appeared on the third row, or else it appeared reversed on the bottom row.

But, the "horizontal bar graph" test worked perfectly, while the vertical ones worked mostly, although sometimes an extra linefeed would happen and the second line of bars got duplicated on the 3rd line of the display.

Can you try testing the unit with a different piece of software?

Miles wrote:Can you try testing the unit with a different piece of software?

Yes.

I tried LCDC, and it worked OK for the first few lines, but then things began to screw up just like above. It looks to be heat-related in the VFD, since it seems to work OK for a while if I plug it in after it hasn't been used for a long time.

Both LCDC and LCD Tester work fine with a LK204-24-USB-IY on the same machine with the same USB cable plugged into the same port.

It would appear my VK204-24-USB is kaput.

Can you contact me at myero@matrixorbital.ca and we can discuss RMA options...