LED display, hackable?

[Xiondz]

Hello there!
I'm working on bingo machine to arcade conversion.
there is an lcd display mounted in top marque. I like to make it working with current project. I've been googling about that display but with no success. Maybe someone could help.

any suggestion appreciated, thanks

  

[Nephasth]

I know nothing of that type of display. I would assume it would be hackable, but expensive the way I would think it could be done. If you could tap into each LED individually you could use LED controllers (like the LEDWiz) with software (like LED Blinky) and get it to display whatever you want.

[SavannahLion]

 Just do the research on the individual ICs, you might get lucky. For instance the datasheet for that GM76C256CLL can easily be found. If you're lucky you mght find the controller and figure out the protocol. If you're not so lucky you might be be able to replace it with a programmable one or find someone who is willing to program a new controller and install it. It won't be easy, but it'll certainly be cheaper than rewiring the whole thing.

[MonMotha]

Most of these things are a matrix of some kind, so driving them is a bit more complex than just using e.g. an LED-Wiz.  Look up those chips running along the length of the LED assembly itself.  They're probably shift registers or something of the like.  If you trace everything back out to the connector between the LED board and the "CPU board" (for lack of a better term), it's probably a fairly simple interface.  You can then just drive that with a small micro or maybe even your parallel port.

If you have something to hook it up to, you may be able to reverse engineer the protocol use by its serial port (or however it hooked up for programming), but that'll be tough without the programming software.

[ChadTower]

Or you could just call the manufacturer and see if they have documentation on usage of the device.  Nobody sells something like that without an instruction booklet.   

[Xiondz]

Thanks for response
It is part of machine i've get, inside was only monitor, original power supply and that LED display, no documentation included, googling does not help.
It seems to be over my skills   

[MonMotha]

Or you could just call the manufacturer and see if they have documentation on usage of the device.  Nobody sells something like that without an instruction booklet.   

That thing looks so old I'd honestly be a little surprised if the company that made it is still in business, let alone still supporting that particular model in any fashion.  I'm not sure you can buy some of those parts, anymore.  On the upside, stuff that old often came with full programming info in the manuals.

[melvinbates]

Looks like the display columns are driven by some darlington arrays(the uln2803s).  I would guess that the rows are driven from those larger chips near the bottom.  I can't quite make out what the chip is above the uln2803s or what's on the bottom of the display.  If you could get a better picture perhaps.

[MonMotha]

They're 74HC164 serial-in parallel-out shift registers.  Basically, you have a giant shift register with a latch signal (you can use a SPI controller to talk to this) for the columns, and then there is probably some other way to drive the rows (could be part of the same shift chain).