CFA-631 Queries

[n0saj]

I am wondering if the CFA-631 display can be ordered in a parallel interface.

We need something exactly like this to act as a replacement for the follwoing module in some existing hardware [ PC 1602-H ]

This is too big to fit in a 3.5" drive bay which is exactly what we want to do.

The buttons will obviously will not be readable via the parallel interface so if we could get access to the TTL signals for the 4 buttons that would be good

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[CF Tech]

What hardware platform and software are you using? Would a serial version of the CFA-631 work?

 

[n0saj]

The LCD would be connecting to a microcontroller. Unfortunately we don't have access to the source of the code in the microcontroller to be able to change it. It is for this reason we were looking for a parallel interface which would be compatible but also want to fit it in a 3.5" drive bay this time around.

The microcontroller connects to a PC via a serial interface but we have very sketchy details of the protocol used.

We could reverse engineer the microcontroller function and replace with a similar circuit with a serial LCD interface but this would be a very long way around the problem.

 

[CF Tech]

Do you know if it uses 4-bit or 8-bit?

How many do you need to make? (just rough numbers, like 1s, 10s, 100,s 1000s)

 

[n0saj]

The microcontroller is an 8 bit device P87LPC764BD. Since the old display has a bit width of 8 I would assume its doing 8 bit transfers but I can't yet confirm this.

Only looking for 1 at the moment.

 

[CF Tech]

I was thinking that if the current micro used a 4-bit interface, maybe you could remove the processor from the CFA-631, and patch into its LCD lines (the CFA-641 uses 4-bits between its micro and LCD controller). Would be a very difficult mod.

 

[n0saj]

Assuming the LCD controller was doing 4 bit transfers - would the information being sent to the PC 1602-H be compatible with the 631 controller?

If the protocol used between the powertip PC1602-h and your 631 controller are not the same then it doesn't really matter. The easiest way then would be just to re-engineer the whole module which is a lot of work. With a bit of extra thought there might be an easier way.

Incidentally the 631 contains a LCD controller and a processor. Can the code in the processor be upgraded in the field or does this have to be done in the factory. If it could be done in the field and I wrote the code for your processor then I could just use the 631 in serial mode.

 

[CF Tech]

> Assuming the LCD controller was doing
> 4 bit transfers - would the information
> being sent to the PC 1602-H be
> compatible with the 631 controller?

Well, mostly . . . the controller is slightly different.

> Incidentally the 631 contains a LCD
> controller and a processor. Can the code
> in the processor be upgraded in the field
> or does this have to be done in the
> factory. If it could be done in the field
> and I wrote the code for your processor
> then I could just use the 631 in serial
> mode.

Some customers have bought the development environment for our micro and "clean-roomed" some code for the CFA-633. You can write support(at]crystalfontz[dot}com (edit to '@' & '.') for information.