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Hello

I'm wanting to ebay myself a GU128X32-311 for use as a nifty little external VFD for my PC. However, I'm unclearona few things, and I was hoping that some of you lot could help me out here.

First thing, I see it uses 5V to run. Right, could I buy a DC variable output voltage mains adapter to power this? It would be the same as running it from the 5v rail of my psu.

Secondly, having only seen a low-res photo of the back of this board, there's two fairly large connection blocks, one horizontal, one vertical (assuming the board is the right way up, heh...). Which block would I wire up? Using this schematic: http://liquid-mp3.schijf.org/schematics ... 32-311.gif

Third, how do I physically connect all the individual wires, just by soldering straight onto the pins? How do I know which pin relates to which on the schematic?

Fourth, could I hack up an old parallel printer cable and use that to plug into the PC/solder onto the board? I'd use a circuit tester to see which pin on the plug was connected to which cable, then make a note of it.

Fith, where exactly do wires that need to be connected to ground actually connect?

I'm not a total electronics newbie, however I'm no pro either.

Help on the above points would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Dave

1. This would probably work, you just need a stable +5v.

2. Only one of the connection blocks is real, the 20pin vertical. The other is a 34pin (?) dummy; it has no connections to it and is not soldered to the board.

3,4,5:
You could solder directly to the pins, but I would recommend using say a 20pin solderable header plug (like the plug on an IDE cable, but only 20pins). Much easier and allows for unplugging.

Take an old printer cable and cut off one end and then use a circuit tester to determine which wire is which. Follow the schematic and connect each pin wire on the DB25 end to the appropriate pin on the header connector (for example, DB25 pin 1 connects to the VFD pin 9). Any pin on the DB25 or VFD connector that ends in an "X" has no connection. Should be pretty straightforward.

For ground, I wired pins 18-25 on the DB25 end together and then connected pin 18 on the VFD to pin 18 on the DB25.

Right, ok thanks. One more thing, on the 20pin blovk, how are they numbered? I would EXPECT them to be numbered like this, but please corect me if I'm wrong.



Cheers,
Dave

Not quite right. The pinout on the VFD is thus, looking at the connector with the notch to the right:



The power connector uses pins 1 and 3:

Upside down and back to front then, hmm, should've guessed..

Anyway, I'll let you know in a couple of weeks if I actually managed to get it up and running. Thanks for the help.

Cheers,
Dave

I have the Noritake 128=32-311 vfd, I have found the schematic but I have a question. Is the wiring arrangement shown how the wires are supposed to connect to the pins in the cable or the pins on the LPT port

For example. If the picture in the schematic is the cable then Pin 9 on the VFD will connect to pin 1 on the cable.

If the picture in the schematic is the port then pin 9 on the vfd will connect to pin 1 on the port.

Since the port and cable are mirror images of each other, that would mean that if I misread the instructions that I connected pin 9 to pin 13 by assuming that I was wiring for the cable and not the port. Can anyone out there help?

What's the issue? Your example of pin 9 of the VFD to Pin 1 of the LPT connector, there's nothing confusing about that.
Here's a more friendly overview:

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My Plexeon-Insane LCD!-Or this one!-LCDinfo-LCDStudio

Thank you for responding coorz.

What I don't understand is this.

If you hold a 25 pin cable and a 25 pin port side by side so that you are facing them and the ping sare arranged the same. Pin 1 is in the upper right corner. The pin in the upper right corner of the lpt port does not connect to the pin on the upper right corner of the cable.

Which one is pin 1. The pin in the upper right corner of the cable or the upper right corner of the port?

I am asking this because I can't make the VFD work. I have checked, and re-checked my wiring. My wiring is correct as I understand the schematic. I have successfully completed the self test, and I can't make it work. I don't see a section in LcdInfo where I can choose the 311 driver. I am assuming that it should automatically select it. I tried that 311 test program. It doesn't do anything.

I am trying to figure out where I went wrong.

I understand you're confused.
If you're using a flatcable with connector on the VFD then pin1 (wire) on the flatcable is pin1 of the VFD, so that goes to pin9 on the LPT connector.

I'm confused because i don't know how you wired it, did you use a flatcable with a 20 way connector and male DB25 connector? Or did you hack up printercable?



You have to use the latest alpha version. The driver can be selected once you start up LCDinfo, right click on it's taskbar icon, then select driver. It is NOT detected automatically. And you will need some 'screens', otherwise still nothing will happen even if you selected the right driver.

If the 311 test program doesn't work then your wiring is faulty.

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My Plexeon-Insane LCD!-Or this one!-LCDinfo-LCDStudio

Coorz,
I had a 25pin to 25pin cable. I cut it in half. I was able to make two different cables one with each of the two configurations I was thinking of. The scond one works. Thank you for your help.

My problem was that I thought that the schematic showed the way to wire a cable and not wiring straight into the port. I reversed all of the wires left to right and it works perfectly now.

Coorz, I'll ask you about this since you seem to have all of the answers I need.

I have the latest alpha and the screens, however when I run it and Winamp none of the infirmation is displayed. It shows a 0 bitrate and no other information. Does this version of LCDInfo rely on a specific version of Winamp, or is there something else I need to do?

THe screens you downloaded rely on Winamp2 or winamp5, also you need to copy vis_lcdinfo.dll to the winamp plugin directory.



Winamp plugin thread is here.

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My Plexeon-Insane LCD!-Or this one!-LCDinfo-LCDStudio