Idea for a new product.

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adt6247

New member
I have a potentially interesting suggestion regaurding the serial LCD's and mounting brackets.

First of all, I'd like to say I love CrystalFontz products. They are extremely high quality and flexible. I love the simplicity of the serial units and brackets. Only a couple things have bugged me:

1) Having to snake the serial cable outside the back of the computer... this always seemed hackish to me.

2) The large amount of blank space on the mounting brackets.

I've come up with a great way to solveboth problems: make a new version of the brackets with a USB hub in them, and a built-in USB/serial converter. Most motherboards today have a 9 or 10 pin riser for additional USB ports internally, meaning only having to feed a thin ribbon cable to the motherboard, rather than out the back of the chassis. In addition, this gives you front-mounted USB ports -- great for people like me who use USB game pads and digital cameras. The 632 PC Mounting Bracket could easilly be modified to put the LCD off-center (to either the left or right), and have 4 USB ports. Assuming they were offered in both colors, I'd buy one for every desktop PC I have (currently 4).
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R

rupert

New member
Good idea... but..

Not a bad idea, but I think I heard it mentioned some time ago that CrystalFontz might be coming out with some LCD screens that'd be purely USB, and would take advantage of the additional bandwidth that the protocol provides, in order to add features like graphics, etc.

Incidentally, since most serial ports are fed from a set of pins on the motherboard (to the DB9 / DB25 on the card edge), it should be pretty trivial to add an internal serial connection via this interface to the solderable points on the 632 and 634. You could probably do the same for the parallel models, too.

Good luck,

--- Rupert

Rupert Scammell
rupe@metro.yak.net
http://metro.yak.net
 
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Paul Whitehouse

New member
Internal Connections

I have to say that I agree - internal connection is far better. I have made an arrangement that terminates the LCD serial port at the rear of the chassis (using an internal m-f serial cable and some screw-down posts) and this requires another serial cable outside to connect to the COM port. Tidier than hacking the case, but still not elegant.
 
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