[time-nuts] Thunderbolt monitor

[jshank]

The Noritake display looks great.
I am hoping that a kit of this proposed Thunderbolt monitor with the 
Noritake display will be made available through TARP in the near future.  I 
am sure that many of the Thunderbolts which recently became available would 
benefit from such a kit.
Jeff
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Didier Juges" <didier at cox.net>
To: "Time-Nuts" <time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 12:47 AM
Subject: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt monitor


>I made a second version (same firmware) of the Thunderbolt monitor. This 
>one
> uses the plastic DIP version of the processor mounted on a small Radio 
> Shack
> proto board and it uses a gorgeous Noritake Vacuum Fluorescent display.
>
> The interface between the Noritake and any ordinary LCD display is the 
> same
> ( as far as pin-out is concerned), except that the Noritake does not have 
> a
> contrast adjustment. Otherwise, the firmware is the same, once the
> differences are accounted for. The Noritake is generally much faster than
> most 2 line LCDs when updating the data, but requires a little more time 
> to
> initialize themselves at power up. My software can drive either display
> without modification.
>
> The Noritake displays have a software command to adjust the brightness 
> down
> to half, and that's it. My firmware does not take advantage of that 
> feature,
> which I find relatively useless, but may prolong the life of the display.
> The VFDs only have a few years of life under continuous operation, so
> dimming the display or turning it off altogether when not needed might be 
> a
> good idea.
>
> See pictures at http://www.ko4bb.com/Timing/GPSMonitor/
>
> Didier KO4BB
>
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