I am using a Thinkpad X61 with a docking station on which I have native COM and LPT ports. Both are nice to connect something.
In my junk box i do have some toys that was never used.
One of them is a a Vacuum Fluorescent Display (or VFD) from a POS. It's a 2x20 dot matrix display used for showing the merchandise price to the customer.
I want to use it (sometime, in the near future) as a big display for my ICOM IC-7000...
The first step was to check if the display is OK.
According to the self-test mode, it's a CD7220-I display, for 24V DC, with a 5x7 matrix 9,2 x 6 mm character and, best of all, its RS232 compatible!
Works nice and is expecting a small PIC to work with!
After that, my bench was somehow in need for another "action" so I was looking in the junk box and found a nice 4x20 LCD!
This was best for connecting to my laptop to show some summaries...
So, I connected to the LPT port...
Drop a line for more informations...
73 de Adrian, YO3HJV
