LCD Smartie

I have a POS VFD screen, it's 2x20, rather large.
It runs on 5 volts, and uses single wire RS-232 communication.
I can actually type on it via hyperterminal.

However, I want it to work with LCD smartie and I am struggling with the control codes. If I can get these displays running, I can get more cheap, so I am hoping they are worth the time.

I have the following test driver.ini

[testdriver]
init=20,14,22,16,
GotoLine1=27,1
GotoLine2=27,33


Pictures of the display here: http://xzess.kicks-ass.org:8000/ServerSide/Images/VFD/

I have made some progress using data sheets for other display made by the same company ( IEE )
This display has tags on it from IEE and MICROS.

So far I have been able to send commands to reset the display and turn the blinking cursor off. Past that I am having an issues where it seems like it wants to scroll up when the characters reach the end of the line. Which also makes it impossible to use the second line because everything keeps scrolling up. I can get stuff to show on the second line, but if I have a clock or status display on either line, it acts like it scrolls up 2 lines each time and then only shows stuff on the first line.

I have been trying to use these 2 data sheets for reference, however they are not for my exact display.
http://www.ieeinc.com/specs/S036x2.pdf
http://www.ieeinc.com/specs/PDK_0003_INOPML_REVC.pdf

I wrote to IEE to try and get a datasheet and they have not written me back.

Any help would be appreciated.

From the first datasheet you've linked to, it looks like you can disable the auto-scroll behaviour on both line using control code sequence 10h, 01h. So your init line would look like: init=20,14,22,16,1

But going by the second data sheet, the 10h command (10 decimal) sets the scroll mode to vertical scroll (the behaviour you describe). Try setting the scroll mode to Wraparound (1Ah, or 26 decimal for Smartie) instead. That way, the cursor jumps back to the top-left after writing the bottom-right character, and should not cause a line scroll.

If that doesn't work, the only workaround I can think of is just to make sure you never write more than 19 characters to the bottom line...

Made a bit more progress with that.

Though.. set to a 2x20 it still acts weird, but now if I set lcd smartie to use is as a 1x40 I get this

I'll put this in as the line for the 1 x 40

1234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ?!$*

the display looks like this, in this order:

KLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ?!$*
1234567890ABCDEFGHIJ

Any ideas ?

The problem with that is showing the CPU % and stuff, if the number goes from a 2 to 3 digit number, the line shifts. Unless you can tell smartie to not shift the line about.

the current test driver ini looks like this:

Init=20,14,22,16,1,26

~Night

Setting Smartie to 1x40 mode just makes it stick everything on one long line. It looks like your LCD is in line wrap mode, so it splits the 40 characters across 2 lines... exactly the same way as if Smartie had written 2 lines of 20 characters.

You can format numbers to always take a certain number of character spaces by using formatting commands like $Right. For example: will give you the free memory in MB, but always as 4 characters. If the number is less than 4 digits, a space will be added to make it up to 4 characters.

This is my testdriver.ini file excerpt.
It seems to work well with my iee 20x2 VFD.. This is the same as the old BGMICRO VFD from years ago.

[Test Driver]
init=14,21,24,246,253,255,255,255,15,24,247,181,223,126,251,13,24,248,149,94,122,233,5,24,249,20,90,104,161,5,24,250,16,72,32,129,4
fini=21
GotoLine1=27,0
GotoLine2=27,20