Oddest LCD I've ever seen

LyosNorezel · Post by **LyosNorezel** » July 4th, 2007, 5:23 pm

Hey ya'll...
With my recent attempts to clean my apartment... I stumbled across what has to be the oddest LCD I've ever seen. At first glance... one could easily swear it was controllerless... however... if you remove the LCD itself from the board... you can see two "blob-type" ICs. Below are some pictures (I appologize for the crappy quality... all I had was my cell phone's built-in camera):

The LCD

LCD Rear

Stamped black ink "Date Code". Says "18 JUN 2001"

Silkscreened "Date Code" and an unidentified number. Does not appear to identify the LCD. "Date Code" says: "JUNE.16,99" Unidentified number says: "A05301-01".

The two "Blob-type" ICs. Towards the top... you can see two white silkscreened numbers... one (the larger one) says: "2201" the other (smaller one) says: "LCD1".

Really crappy shot of part of the pinout. From top to bottom this one says:
VPP
LCD_A0
LCD_MWR
LCD_SWR
LCD0

Really crappy shot of the rest of the "pinout". From top to bottom it says:
LCD1
LCD2
LCD3
LCD4
LCD5
LCD6
LCD7
GND

The pinout on the LCD, as a whole, reads as follows (Guessing on pin numbers based on the direction in which they were silkscreened on):
Pin 1 == VPP
Pin 2 == LCD_A0
Pin 3 == LCD_MWR
Pin 4 == LCD_SWR
Pin 5 == LCD0
Pin 6 == LCD1
Pin 7 == LCD2
Pin 8 == LCD3
Pin 9 == LCD4
Pin 10 == LCD5
Pin 11 == LCD6
Pin 12 == LCD7
Pin 13 == GND

There is a second set of (two) pins that are completely unmarked... however they appear to go directly to one of the transistors on the board labled "Q4". I have been entirely unsuccessful in identifying this LCD. I'm afraid to attempt to hook it up... as I don't even know how many volts this thing requires for power!
Any ideas?
Lyos Gemini Norezel

uzumaki · Post by **uzumaki** » July 5th, 2007, 3:49 am

Look closely at the LCD itself. Could you tell if it's graphic (no gap between pixels) or text (several gaps that arraigned display pixels in maybe 5x8 blocks). I can tell there are 32 rows from the left side of the picture so it's 32 pixels high or 4 lines high. Top row is not clear for me but looks to be maybe 128 pins. So could be a 128x32 graphic display?

LCD0 to 7 is defiantly data. VPP and GND is pretty obvious. I would start with 5v DC as I doubt that small LCD module was designed for lower voltage. See if you can get any test display.

Not sure what A0, MWR, and SWR correspond but one is probably enable, one reset, and one for write.

EDIT: typo galore. Must finish coffee before making a post...

LyosNorezel · Post by **LyosNorezel** » July 5th, 2007, 5:13 am

There does not appear to be any gaps between pixels... so I'm gonna guess it's a graphic LCD. As for the top row... my eyesight isn't that good, and my depth perception sucks, so if I miscounted... don't be surprised. I think it's 108. Anyway... I'd really be interested to find out what all those capacitors, resistors, and transistors are for (on the side of the LCD). Ah well. Info would be appreciated.
Lyos Gemini Norezel

LyosNorezel · Post by **LyosNorezel** » July 9th, 2007, 12:19 am

Ok... just a couple more pics... and a bit more info. I managed to connect it without blowing it up... so I'd call that a mild success. However... it doesn't display anything. I connected VPP and GND and the 8 Data pins (LCD0-LCD7). Without knowing which pins are Enable, and write... I am unable to get it to display anything. Anyway... here are the two new pics:

Pushing gently on the display I am able to get some pixels to light up.

Pushing gently on the bottom of the display... we can see some images embedded in the display.

Again... info would be appreiciated.
Lyos Gemini Norezel

Post by **caesar** » July 9th, 2007, 9:04 am

Hmm, looks like a specialized graphical display from some appliance. The bottom part has some predefined icons and the upper part could be used for pictures and text.

The bad news is that without some datasheed you can't do anything with it. (Smartie, natively, wouldn't support graphic lcd's anyway)

uzumaki · Post by **uzumaki** » July 12th, 2007, 9:58 pm

Or maybe a hand held type system? Or even one of those little laptop for kids?

There's probably not much you can do without datasheet for that LCD so for now you could just put it away and forget about it for the next 10 years.

LyosNorezel · Post by **LyosNorezel** » July 25th, 2007, 3:09 pm

Now that I'm thinking about it... my (incredibly) poor memory seems to be throwing up something about a VTech kids laptop. Not sure if that helps any.
Lyos Gemini Norezel