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[Lightning|Striker]

When I said Blue/White, I ment White Chars on a Blue Background, on the Screen itself when powered

[greengiant]

Well that will depend on the LCD you get.

[greengiant]

got the prototype in today, it looks great !

ill post pictures in a little bit.

[moobar]

Pictures, HOTDOG!

Hows the status on the special Xenium connector?

Or will we need to solder the wires to the thru-holes under the connector?

[greengiant]

It will have the special Xen connector, for no soldering to the xenium.
Also a splice connector for the 5v for the LCD.

An update on the prototype, I finally got a chance to test the adapter with XOS2.0 and have found something weird.
It appears the OS sends out the command so fast, even the 10mhz PIC cant keep up. But dont worry, the OS doesnt display anything important, what matters is XBMC and that works beautifully.


I have 8 Prototypes for sale, $13 each + shipping. They will be to get some money to fund the next set of productions ones. I will post more info soon. So you can decide if you want to buy one of them, dont expect much demand for the 8 i got, but just in case drop me an email if you want one of them.

Edit: Posted first pictures on website.

[moobar]

Will the software be upgradeable? Or are you using OTP parts?

I dont plan to upgrade to 2.0 any time soon or even at all. OS1.1 does everything I need it to do, load a bios. Odd thing is I thought the CrystalFontz LCD could only handle 20khz clock rate, but then you of course have the delay of writing to the slow LCD.

I guess I can be a guinea pig for ya. Email sent.

[greengiant]

Yes it is upgradable. At the moment, you need a pic programmer, but Im working on using a bootloader to allow simple serial programming of the pic (for super simple upgrades).

I dont expect to many upgrades once I get it super stable, but it is nice to have the easy ability to do so.


I wanted to point out that the because the OS doesnt display properly, doesnt mean the other apps wont. The reason is that every single app that will use the LCD has full control over the LCD (thus the OS doesnt matter for the app to be able to use the LCD).  I have done extensive tests with XBMC and i havent been able to get the LCD to go out of synch, which is great.

The XOS2 synch problem, I found, but not exactly sure how to fix it. I have done some re-work of the code to optimize it even more, and now it shows 'Xenium OS 2.0' properly 99% of the time (the other 1% its on the upper left corner)
This is attributed to the LCD clearing the display, and the delay associated with this. IE, the XOS sends a clear command, the pic tells the LCD to clear and it takes a msec or two, but even thought it doesnt seem like much, by then the XOS has already sent one or two bytes which are then lost in the transmission and such the problem occurs. But as I said, i have managed to minimize this problem, and it does not affect functionality of the LCD in other programs.
I have spoken with a friend at Ozxodus, and will see if it will be possible for them to delay the output by 1msec (or fraction) which should not cause ANY problems or inconvinience to any user since these are times that are almost impossible to be noticed by the human eye.

Will also be posting a quick guide on how to install the prototype (for you lucky few) and hopefully more pictures.

I really got to thank all you out there. Lots of emails and questions have kept me going and finishing this project. I do it for you. So.... thanks for the support.


PS. Yeah I know this is a long post..but I wanna ask anyways.
If anyone out there has a contact, or makes PCB's, that can provide me the service please contact me. Iam looking for a possible cheaper manufacturer to try and lower the cost of the unit even further. Also 16f876a SOIC chips, if you can get em cheap let me know. Thanks.

[fff]

Thanks for all these good news grengiant.
I guess all prototypes have been bought so I will wait for the final release.
Awesome work man.

[greengiant]

2 are gone. Havent had a chance to email anyone back yet. So just email me if you want one.

[fff]

Mail sent greengiant.

[greengiant]

Got the SPI connectors today. They are great.
Got a WHOLE bunch of them.  So if you need them for whatever project your doing, contact me.
Will post pictures of em tommorow.

[greengiant]

grrr..as i fix one thing.. something else breaks.

didnt get around to testing the adapter on a 2x16/2x20 and just till now did i try and found something is broken. so im working to see what it is i have to do to fix it.
shouldnt be much different than that of a 4x??


there is always raw mode, and that works beautifully, no matter what. so will investigate more and let you all know.

[greengiant]

so started to tinker and such...

and after 1 pic blown, and some 5 hours, and some 1000 less hairs on my haid.
still nothing, its very strange, only happens with the  2x20 lcd.


it boots up, fine, displays the boot screen, then the xenium text, and it varies, but anywhere from right away to none  the screen goes crazy.
I thought it may have been a crystal problem, but it works fine with the 4x20 so not sure.
I even tried removing all of the lcd code from the PIC, and it still happens. randomly.

any ideas greatly appreciated.

[fff]

I don't know if this can help but the crystalfontz LCD 2x20 are not working (i've seen this on ozxodus forums, where only 632 and 634 are talked about).
Not sure if this is really true but that's all i know.
btw, i don't understand why it wouldn't wok on 2x20

[greengiant]

Really ?
hmmm... you have given me HOPE !

hehe.. tommorow after i get some sleep..ill head over to the threads and see what people have to say.
I got a 634 and 632 from CF (THANKS OZXODUS) but i have only tested the 634. Ill give the 632 a whirl. I dont see why it wouldnt work though..

mayby i wont leave as early.. hehe.