Nokia 3310 LCD on a parallel port

Laymanspeak: A Nokia 3310 is lowcost, less than 100 INR. So electronics projects requiring displays frequently use them. How to get such a thing working by making a connection off the parallel port is detailed below.

• Nice screens shots of the Nokia 3310 LCD, as an audio player UI, secondary display  on the web was the actual motivation.
• Main info taken from these :Open source serial display library support for Nokia 3310 and Thermometer using a Nokia 3310 LCD
• Got 1 from the usual place and its difficult to assemble the LCD once it is opened. The pin headers do not sit back easily.
• Used the power circuitry from the Thermometer site. You do not actually need to use 3 data pins to power the LCD like in that example. And as I had to change serdisp code to switch on a pin in the LPT port, just used a USB connector to get 5V. Chk pic. I used 2 diodes (1N4148) to drop the voltage to around 3.9 - 4V.
• Used the wiring diagram from the Serdisp PCD site.  Instead of 1K ohms used 10K.  The Vout pin cap is 4.7uF and the capacitor across Vdd is 100uF. This cap seems to give a stable power source and better contrast.
• Circuit construction is pretty simple. Soldering skill might be needed.
• Downloaded the latest serdisp tarball and compiled straight out on the Fed 11 box.
• Connected the circuit and testserdisp was able to bring up the LCD. Pics attached.
• Also downloaded and compiled GraphLcd . This supports displays supported by serdisp. You can draw pics and get fancy fonts on the LCD. showpic, showtext, convpic: These are tools that convert pics and renders stuff on the LCD.
• In case the LCD does not work, check at the Vout pin. Pin 7.  If the LCD has been initialised properly this should be around 9 V. If for some reason, communication between PC and LCD is not possible this value will be at a 3-4V range.
• LCD details: 84x48 pixels. mono chrome. Works on a serial interface (SCLK and Serial Data-in). Has a D/C (Data or Active Low Command) mode and a Reset pin. The CS has been permanently grounded as in the serdisp case. To check if this display is ok,  a Res has to be issued and then command mode and values of 0x21: to put the LCD in Extended mode and 0xC8 to set the Vop. After this command the Vop actually goes to 9V. Basically gives a clue that the LCD comm is fine.

 Serdisp showing digits on LCD

Serdisp showing Pattern

 Parallel port with USB power

My Blog searchable on Google

Am officially searchable on Google !!! Its Goooogle ON for me !!

Pavilion DV 2500 LCD replacement

Laymanspeak: How I changed the broken display screen of my laptop.

• LCD screen broken while travelling in car
• LCD spec: 1200x800, 30 pin LCD connector
• Original part is around 500$ (27k INR)
• Tried sourcing it from the US/UK. Cost is around 12K to 8K. Too high by my standards :)
• Indian website gadgets.in sells it for 6k including shipping. Very proactive seller. Nice to see in an Indian businessman.
• Tried my local contacts and got the original HP part for slightly lesser.
• Opened up the laptop myself, there was a problem with the length of the flourescent tube wire.
• Got it extended/soldered from a professional and fit it myself after covering the LCD backside wit the metallic lining (anti-static?).
• Laptop screen works and  looks as good as ever.

Colorize a Nokia 1110 or a 1112

Laymanspeak: This explains how a Nokia 1110  or a 1112 phone, which is black and white can be easily converted to Colour by changing the LCD.
1600 LCD fitted:
Original LCD:
New UI the phone shows:

Earlier UI:

• Nokia 1110 is a yellow over black phone.
• Read up that the LCD is pin swappable with the Nokia 1600. Got an LCD for some 120Rs in the usual place.
• Changed it and the UI (look and feel) has changed too. Pretty pleased with some color in life. Compare the earlier BW with the 1100 color pics. And make up your mind what you would want.
• Thanks to the phone owner for letting me change it.
• This works on a Nokia  1112 too.
• In both cases the drawback is that the original phone will not be able to show the time when the  screen is locked cos the screen turns completely black. But a click on the phone will show time.

Netgear WGR 614 V6

• For the Lay(wo)man: This "thing" is a wireless device, something that you need to connect devices (computers/phones/etc) wirelessly to each other. It was continuously re-booting. So the info below explains how this was set right and what the problem was.
• Netgear WGR614 V6: Wireless 54 Mbps router borrowed from a friend.
• Symptom: keeps rebooting after a few seconds. Traffic dump shows the Router expects to be given the vxworks image. But after it fails, resets again.
• From the netgear forum found that it could be an issue with the MTU (there is a need to decrease) it.
• Also disabled uPnP.
• This did not help.
• Finally changed the power supply and the Router is holding.
• The Spec of this Router is the following: Processor/chipset: BCM5352 SoC, 1MB Flash, 16MB RAM. Currently, Linux will not run on it cos the images are bigger than 1MB. The Flash needs to be upgraded to atleast 2M before any small WRT image will run on it (dd-WRT). Jtag pins are not exposed so they cant be used. The visible connector inside the box is the Serial port which runs at TTL levels.
• Also have to report the use of a "telnetenable" windows executable, which creates a proprietary packet and sends to the Netgear router and after this lets one log in and check random things using telnet.

Linksys WUSB54GC Ver 3 USB dongle Linux support

Laymanspeak: This is a USB device that provides wireless connectivity on a desktop/laptop. How to include support for this on Linux and what steps to take are explained here.

1. USB Dongle with ID 1737:0077. Black colour version 3. http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WUSB54GC


2. This is assumed to be the rt2870 chip.


3. Uses the rt2x00usb driver by default in Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11. This does not work. The activity light does not come on either. The machine reports a wifi0 interface but cant scan/etc


4. Had to manually install the firmware rt2870.bin in the /lib/firmware directory. Activity light glows but cannot connect.


5. Staging drivers in the Fedora 11 kernel (drivers maintained/contributed by individual companies) are old and did not work. They are version 1 of the ralink source.


6. Downloaded the 2870 chip drivers from ralinktech http://web.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html. The particular source being http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/drivers/2009_0820_RT2870_Linux_STA_V2.2.0.0.tar.bz2. This did not work either.


7. Read up somewhere that this actually is the RT3070 chipset and the driver being http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/drivers/2009_0525_RT3070_Linux_STA_v2.1.1.0.bz2. This driver as per the documentation only works uptil 2.6.29 kernel. It compiled on the Fed 11 machine and creates an ra0 interface. Changes required are: Include the USB vend_id/prod_id in the USB definitions file of the ralinktech source and enable support for NetworkManager in the config file.
8. This setup works for me but I believe there are problems for hidden SSID networks.

uCLinux on a Palm Vx

uClinux on the Palm with Cordless Battery.

cpuinfo and meminfo

Laymanspeak: This handheld device is a Palm Vx device. It runs PalmOS. How to run uClinux, a smaller footprint Linux, so that it becomes easy to extend this device is detailed below.

• Got Palm Vx frm my friend
• Device battery dead but boots via Serial Cradle.
• Rear of device opened by ironing the edges of the device.
• Trials with different batteries: any 3.6 to 4 V battery will do. Used a Nokia battery, Motorola battery and finally as in the pic a 3.7 V battery from a cordless phone. The device boots.
• Installed the Palm suite 4.1 on PC and transferred the prc file from this http://palm-linux.sourceforge.net/
• Click on penguin logo and then theres Linux.
  
  
  

Blog 0: Test

Small test to check Blogger features

Bold: works

Italics: works

Blue word in red.

http://ajsais.blogspot.com/

Random Pic that I took