My serial LCD for displaying directions

[Rawker]

maybe i should try that, the manual says the usb has a 5v and a gnd so i'll try hooking it up to that

edit: got it working, now to figure out how to send files to it

edit #2: i'm having trouble sending files to it, i tried everything in the thread and i can't seem to get anything to display on the screen. I know the screen works because i can adjust the screen's contrast level or brightness or whatever it is. anyways if anyone has the time to help me out my icq is 118287640 as i can't seem to figure out what the problem is.

i tried the stuff BobBorakovitz posted
configured the ports like maraxle said

i tried both of my comps and no luck and the only thing i can think of is that it's my cable which is http://www.radioshack.ca/estore/Product.aspx?language=en-CA&product=2600117&category=Parallel+%26+Serial&catalog=RadioShack

[Rawker]

btw i get this error when trying copy test.txt com1 in >run>cmd> "The handle is invalid. 0 file(s) copied."

bump do you think i have to do this?

"but the cable is a 9 pin serial cable that allows pins 2, 3, and 5 to go straight through, connects pins 1, 4, and 6 together on the PC end, and connects 7 and 8 together on the PC end.  Pin 9 is unused.  The reason for connecting the pins together on the PC end is to ensure that it always has a DSR/DTR signal and a CTS/RTS signal.  This is not necessary on XP, however, as it appears to be more forgiving of the serial communications standards than DOS and Win98 are..."

[maraxle]

What OS are you using?  If it's not XP (or maybe 2000, haven't tested), you need the custom cable.

Also, run a "mode" command before you try copying the file for the first time.  I think that's mentioned somewhere else in this thread too.

[Rawker]

i'm running windows xp
i tried the "mode" command and here's what i got:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\default>mode

Status for device LPT1:
-----------------------
    Printer output is not being rerouted.


Status for device COM1:
-----------------------
    Baud:            19200
    Parity:          None
    Data Bits:       8
    Stop Bits:       1
    Timeout:         ON
    XON/XOFF:        OFF
    CTS handshaking: ON
    DSR handshaking: OFF
    DSR sensitivity: OFF
    DTR circuit:     ON
    RTS circuit:     HANDSHAKE


Status for device COM2:
-----------------------
    Baud:            1200
    Parity:          None
    Data Bits:       7
    Stop Bits:       1
    Timeout:         OFF
    XON/XOFF:        OFF
    CTS handshaking: OFF
    DSR handshaking: OFF
    DSR sensitivity: OFF
    DTR circuit:     ON
    RTS circuit:     ON


Status for device CON:
----------------------
    Lines:          300
    Columns:        80
    Keyboard rate:  31
    Keyboard delay: 1
    Code page:      437


C:\Documents and Settings\default>copy desktop\test.txt com1
The handle is invalid.
        0 file(s) copied.

C:\Documents and Settings\default>

[maraxle]

Hmmm...  My com1 looks like this:

Status for device COM1:
-----------------------
    Baud:            19200
    Parity:          None
    Data Bits:       8
    Stop Bits:       1
    Timeout:         OFF
    XON/XOFF:        OFF
    CTS handshaking: OFF
    DSR handshaking: OFF
    DSR sensitivity: OFF
    DTR circuit:     ON
    RTS circuit:     ON

If you can make yours look like that using some of the mode command line switches, you should have no problem.  If you type "mode /?" it'll give you a list of the available switches to try.  It'll end up looking something like this (all on one line):

mode com1: baud=19200 parity=n data=8 stop=1  dtr=on rts=on octs=off odsr=off

[Rawker]

sweet i got it working now maraxle thanks alot, although my parity kept changing to 7 whenever i changed the rts circuit but whatever it WORKS!!! this is so effin sweet i can't tell you how much i appreciate all your work and help maraxle thanks again.

[REBIRTH]

This whole thing is awesome!  Seemed like a pipe dream a year ago when I built my machine.  The guys that are doing this - how bright are the displays?  They don't seem to be backlit, so can you see them well in normal room light or do you plan on placing a little LED light near it to light it up?

[TheGatesofBill]

I'm planning on adding several LEDs to light it. An unlight LCD is very hard to read in less than optimal light.

[maraxle]

This whole thing is awesome!  Seemed like a pipe dream a year ago when I built my machine.  The guys that are doing this - how bright are the displays?  They don't seem to be backlit, so can you see them well in normal room light or do you plan on placing a little LED light near it to light it up?

Admittedly, it is a little dim.  I found a backlight kit for this particular LCD, but it doesn't match the color scheme of my cabinet, so I don't want it.  It's kind of a bluish white color, which doesn't go all that well with my black and red cabinet.  If they come out with a red backlight kit, I'm all over it.

[mp2526]

Admittedly, it is a little dim.  I found a backlight kit for this particular LCD, but it doesn't match the color scheme of my cabinet, so I don't want it.  It's kind of a bluish white color, which doesn't go all that well with my black and red cabinet.  If they come out with a red backlight kit, I'm all over it.

I think I've seen the back light you are referring to, however I don't think the guy makes em any more as I haven't gotten any responses from his online store.  Maybe if enough of us want some he will produce another run.

http://www.techknowman.com/Kits/Kits.htm

[TheGatesofBill]

You could buy EL sheets other places.

I just got my screen, and I can't get it working. I'm sure its something stupid though.

[Aceldamor]

Glad to know you got your screen....was worried that I hadn't heard anything from either of you on if it was sent/received.  

[TheGatesofBill]

Well, I had it sent to my mom's house, and I just now got a chance to pick it up. Any ideas what stupid thing I'm doing?

[Aceldamor]

Well....I take it you've done everything on the board so far?

[TheGatesofBill]

D'oh! You need to build a power cable, don't you. I don't think I saw how anywhere though.

[bioart]

I took a USB cable and identified the +5 and ground (red and black on mine,  but used a voltmeter anyways).  I spliced that cable into a dvd digital out cable that fits perfectly into the power header on the lcd.  Now the LCD usb powered

I emailed the guy selling the backlight many times, but have never gotten a response... what else do I need if I buy the EL sheet?

I started working on my app to drive it, and it may become a full featured FE... we'll see

[TheGatesofBill]

You'd need an EL sheet, and EL inverter, and a pair of scissors.

[mp2526]

Ah, cool, I didn't look close enough to realize that was all it would take.  Thanks for the tip.

[Aceldamor]

D'oh! You need to build a power cable, don't you. I don't think I saw how anywhere though.

Yeah, check this post:

holding the screen face up and horizontal, the two pins on the left of the daughter board (where the db9 connector is) are the 5 volt lines. Top being current bottom being ground.

If you hold the LCD Vertical with the contrast lever up they would be the two bottom pins, right side being ground, left side being current.

You can use a small 2 pin molex connector to wire it up.  Your best bet is to use an IPAQ (though I don't know how) or to wire it directly to one of the device power leads from the pc (5 volt & ground)

[opcode]

BTW, the techknowman site you were referring to earlier (http://www.techknowman.com/Kits/Kits.htm) took my order for a backlight so he must still be around, I got an email from him today and paypalled the total cost ($42 for the kit w/ usps shipping).  So he definintely is around, although it looks like he is almost out of kits (said 5 left when I ordered).  Just thought I would mention this for everyone looking for backlights on these LCDs.

[Silver]

Hmmm. anyone know any UK distributors for the backlight kit? Or ideally some info on a d-i-y job for backlighting LCD's?

I've dug out my LCD (originally planned for an MP3 display) after reading this thread and thrown some commands together in VB. just need to solder on a serial connection....

Also Minwah -  if you read this - I am keen to implement this feature in my setup, ideally without making up millions of batch files for each game/emu. I was thinking of writing an app in VB to run in the background and catch commands to load romd and then kick out the right file to the LCD, but realise that its far from ideal. Is MAmewah written in VB? Would you be interested in sticking an option in to allow sending a txt file to the com port on loading a game? (extremely easy if you're using mscomm.ocx in VB). Then anyone with an LCd can work out what control characters their LCD requires and stick it their txt files.

Oh - and I'm only picking on you as I love Mamewah so much! ;-)

[maraxle]

Also Minwah -  if you read this - I am keen to implement this feature in my setup, ideally without making up millions of batch files for each game/emu.

It's actually only one batch file per emulator.

[Silver]

woops yes, obvious really - change the exe for the bat with %1 as the romname... Obvious really.

thanks for the pointer!

[gprime]

I only read half this thread, and I remember seeing something earlier today that looked pretty cool:



Anyone know where to find those kind of LCDs? and the price range on them? I'd love to have a) something with a backlight and b) something i could have fun with graphics on.

[TheGatesofBill]

http://www.crystalfontz.com/products/index-grph.html

They are pretty pricey though ($100+).

[Silver]

These LCD's are superb....

I've knocked together a little VB app that will scan controlsdat and listinfo XML files and make a bunch of lcd files based on the contents of your rom folder.... but is still early days for me in the land of VB speaking to XML.

It seems works fine (although only tested on about 15 roms in a dir) - the end files display fine on the LCD. However, it seems to eat up a monster 150 megs of ram when running (listinfo.xml is 20 megs, controlsdat.xml about 0.5meg) - anyone have any tips to parse xml from vb6 without loading the xml first?

Cheers for any help,
Silver

[maraxle]

I had my version of that program read it line-by-line like a text file, rather than truly parsing it.  It's potentially slower, and definitely not the most clean way of doing things, but it's certainly less memory-intensive.  Plus the whole program was only 15-20 lines of code.  It was tested on 500 or so roms in a directory.

[Silver]

aha.  well you live and learn - I was going nuts trying to figure out all this Xpath expressions....

maybe I'll try that way and see how it goes. Out of interest how long did it take doing 500? Mind you I suppose the disc cache negates any advantage of loading it all first.... Hmmm.

Still - if it works it works. ;-)

[bioart]

I got my backlight kit today... taking off the film on the screen was a major pain in the neck, but 20-30 minutes later, it was out and clean... (hint, use lots of windex )  

Anyways, it looks great!  I'm going to work on the program now  I just need to get my XML parsing to a better point...

Art

[Silver]

I'd like to get mine backlit too.... although the kits seem very pricey, and can't find any in the UK.....

anyway, you would be welcome to use my prog if you want - although I have now found a bug trying to run it on a larger roms dir. Once I sus that I will probably stick it up for d/l. (so long as no one has a go at my sketchy VB and horrendous mem usage!)

[JoeB]

Folks, why are you writing your own XML parsers, when there are so many free great ones out there?

Check out the XERCES parser (www.apache.org) just as an example.  It supports java, perl and C/C++.. so many other free ones out there.

No need to re-invent the wheel!

[Silver]

Hoho, thanks for the advice but I think you are overestimating my abilities. I'm not talking about having written my own XML parser - I'm using the MS DOMDocument and IXMLDOMDocument parser for VB. It works well - I've now ironed out the bugs and have successfully generated files for a complete 82 romset.

I was just surprised that it 1)takes around 170megs ram to run 2)is pretty slow - several minutes worth of processing on a high end athlonxp. I'm new to VB and XML so I'm sure my code could be improved, but theres not much there. It seems the entire XML files must be loaded into memory to recall data from them, and that is not massively fast. Howver, I will tweak the code - and am also going to try a more direct text scan approach which seems to work fine for various FE's and other progs out there.....

[opcode]

Silver...

If you use SAX instead of dom to parse the xml files you will use WAYYYY less memory.  The method you are using is called DOM which loads the whole XML tree into memory, then you grab the nodes out of memory.  With SAX (supported by the MS XML parse 4.0) you don't load all the xml into memory, instead the nodes are fed to you as its being parsed, then you grab the parts you need, WAY less memory usage, but a little trickier to understand.  Here is a good developers guide on it: http://www.nedcomp.nl/support/origdocs/xml4/extracted/sax_devgd_overview_0jef.aspx.  Hope that helps  

[Silver]

And to think this was going to be easy.... ;-)

Cheers for that - I will take a look. I'm away for a bit but I'll come back to it and see if I can spruce things up. I would also like to add a few facilities - such as allowing the postion of the text tobe moved to  reflect an individual cp to make it nice and clear.

On a more general note, this great LCD has made me realise how completely superb the controls.dat project is.  The majority of games come back with "unknown" as there keys as they are pulled from the mame listinfo. I can only recommend that people contribute and add some info over on there site....

[dvdapex]

Are the LCDs you guys are getting for ~ $20 still available from anyone?  If so, please PM me with info.

Thanks.

[Witchboard]

This may be a little off topic, but somewhere on the same level.  I've been waiting for this thread to resurface so I could ask.

How hard would it be to make a LED driver that would light up buttons used in a game?  Like if you play Defender, all the buttons the game uses lights up then when you change to Missile Command the trackball and buttons used for that game light up.  I figured it could basically use the controls.dat, but the LED driver board would be the hard part to make.

[REBIRTH]

http://www.crystalfontz.com/products/index-grph.html

They are pretty pricey though ($100+).

Which LCD on that order page is the one being used?  Thanks

[Silver]

Rebirth:

  I've got none of those - they are all much bigger. Mine is only a 24x8 characters LCD  (thats 8 lines of text, with 24 characters on each line). But also much cheaper ;-)

Mine is essentially the same one as the one sold on the http://www.pjrc.com/ website as part of there MP3 player project. They sell the LCD with some buttons for $42 at http://www.pjrc.com/store/mp3_display.html
I presume its the same/similar to maraxle as he uses the same control codes as mine - again these are all listed on the pjrc website as mine has had its rom flashed with pjrc's rom.

I got my LCD in the UK without any buttons off ebay - and i think others have got similar ones in the US off ebay too. I don't think it really matters if its not the same one - so long as it can be wired up to a com port via RS232 and the instructions to the LCD are documented. I'm still rewritting by little program to generate all the text files but its easy to set up different instructions for different LCD's.

Witchboard:

Yes a superb idea - its been mentioned before, and I seem to recall that it was the LAME arcade website that was attemped to kick the project off? there is thread a thread asking what happened to him/it at: http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=16989;start=msg162692#msg162692

but it seems to have died out. I don't know how they were thinking of wiring it up but I hope it gets back on track!

[Witchboard]

Witchboard:

Yes a superb idea - its been mentioned before, and I seem to recall that it was the LAME arcade website that was attemped to kick the project off? there is thread a thread asking what happened to him/it at: http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=16989;start=msg162692#msg162692

but it seems to have died out. I don't know how they were thinking of wiring it up but I hope it gets back on track!

Haha.. I guess I got in this hobby a little too late.  All the cool ideas are already taken!  Thanks for the link.

[Silver]

Well I posted this in the listxml topic, but realise this is the more appropriate spot:

Mame Lcd Gen 0.94beta - generate those control txt files for lcd display.

This is pretty much the first program I've let loose to the general public. Please give it a try and let me know if it works for you etc....

Just point it at your roms dir, an empty destination dir, the listinfo.xml (sorry does not autogenerate from mame yet.....) and the controlsDAT xml (or just one of them) and it should do the rest. The defaults are for the PJRC LCD I own, but LCD instructions/headers can be entered manually. Or send me codes that work for you and I will add it to the drop down selection.

Please note this is BETA software and hence will probably wreck your pc/steal your passwords/emails/creditcardinfo/adresss/soul.

Support coming soon to MameWah.

Found at:

http://www.silverfoxy.plus.com/

PS: It uses the SAX parser in VB and I've stuck in a counter so you can see how fast it parses the xml's as it goes. To test just set up the xml locations and point it at a dud rom dir and it will parse the xmls.  Its not max speed as its also DoEventing/refreshing the counter everyloop.

EDIT: New Web Address