LCDInfo.com

Is there anyone using this combination?

I just hooked up 2 different Noritake's to my new mobo, but nothing appears on the display. Software has been verified to work. So now I'm wondering if anyone else has this problem.

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Creator of LiQuiD-MP3

So I guess it's working with lcd's but it's only the noritake vfd's not working ?

Yup, haven't encountered any other problems. T6963C, SED133x, KS0108B, etc are all working fine.

As you know I'm working on a complete rewrite, and last night it was the Noritake 800 driver's turn. So I hooked up a display, started LiQuiD-MP3 and tada.... no image.... oooowkej, that's weird...

Next I took a 800A and tried that one. Still no result. Tripple checked wiring, no errors found there (it had always worked). Changed LPT settings from ECP to EPP and ECP/EPP, no change in results.

Checked the sourcecode for mistakes, but I couldn't find any. As these displays have always worked fine with the latest LiQuiD-MP3, I dug up version 0.9.4. To my suprise this didn't work either! Double checked every setting and so on and so forth.
Still need to try other software (LCDInfo).

So the above has lead me to conclude this is some sort of Noritake - A7V600 (timing) issue.

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Creator of LiQuiD-MP3

Tried the use the Noritake 800 on another computer and no problems at all. Everything worked fine, so it doesn't seem to be LiQuiD-MP3 itself. The main suspect now is the DLPortIO driver as LCDInfo (which uses WinIO) does work under ECP+EPP mode. LCDInfo does not work in ECP mode.

In the BIOS the LPT needs to be set to ECP for all other displays to work. Setting it to ECP+EPP makes all displays to stop working, although this has always worked in the past and should be the setting used as you're interfacing with normal 5V devices.

One other thing worth noting: I measured the voltages on the port and with ECP, a high level was 3,6V while in ECP+EPP mode a high level was 4,7V. In the Noritake 800 specs you'll find the minimum voltage for a high level is 4.0V. This might explain why it is not working as the voltages of the port are to low for the Noritake 800 to be 'accepted'.

All in all this is very strange. On thing is clear, this is not as it should be!

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Creator of LiQuiD-MP3

Besides the port driver there might also be differences in the code accessing the controller that cause different timing between the LiQuiD-MP3 and LCDInfo. But too low voltage in the parallel port is of course a bad thing also.