[simpits-tech] Hmmm.

[Simon Bennett]

About a year ago I was in an electronic surplus store and found an LCD 
screen. I decided to get it since the 3" by 3" screen looked great for 
making an RWR or radar display for the simpit I hope to eventually start 
building. I took it home, but was dismayed to find that the company that 
made the screen is long dead and no info on the screen or how to drive it 
could be found anywhere. So I tossed it in a box and ignored it until now.

Being bored, I decided to look again and managed to find the datasheet for 
the IC that controls the LCD. So now I actually might be able to get it to 
work. The functions of most of the pins on the back are still mysterious to 
me since the components on the PCB get in the way of me tracing where they 
lead and because my multimeter's batteries are currently dead, but I have 
figured out ground, power, and reset, plus a couple of the actual I/O pins. 
I can hook up it up and get the backlight to come on, albeit dimly, but I 
expect that's because I was feeding the screen itself 9 volts and it 
probably takes 12. Unfortunately a 9 volt battery was all I had as a power 
source at the time.

At least I know something in there works, now maybe when I can get around to 
building a PIC programmer, buying a few microcontrollers, and learning to 
program them I can also figure out how to drive the LCD.

My biggest challenge is that I have absolutely no money. As a 17-year old 
high school student in a lower-middle-class family and no time for an actual 
job, I find my options are usually limited.

At least I've been damn lucky so far; I have a complete HOTAS setup with a 
Suncom F-15 throttle, a CH F-16 Combat stick, and CH pro pedals, all of 
these purchased for less than 5$ each from Goodwill. The flight sticks tend 
to be less than 3$. Of course, you do get what you pay for, and I've gone 
through no less than five Suncom F-15E Talon joysticks as well as two other 
CH joysticks, all worn out from excessive simming. I just somehow keep 
finding the same thing over and over and over again. In fact, I already 
found a fourth CH combat stick for when this one wears out.

I have no idea how this happens. Hell, the LCD I found in the surplus store 
I bought for 3$.

I have plenty of great ideas, but so far they only exist on paper. In fact, 
I honestly may have to construct them out of paper. So far my plan is to 
take a cardboard box (from an OEM video card), poke holes in it, insert 
toggle switches from Radio Shack into holes, and wire that up to the 
electronic bits from a keyboard I ripped to pieces. I haven't gotten around 
to this yet.

For MFDs, (besides maybe the LCD) I have 2 ancient GRiDCase laptops on which 
I can display flight instruments in the form of orange, glowing, gas-plasma 
CGA graphics. The oldest is a 286 that was made in 1987, has 1 mb of RAM and 
a 20mb hard drive. The other's a 386. Both lack network capability (besides 
their 2400 baud modems) so I'll have to settle for serial communication. 
I'll have to write all of the software myself.

To simulate the forces of gravity, I can hold a few GRiD laptops in my lap; 
each weighs about 15 lbs and is almost the size of a VCR. They actually 
aren't too bad, especially compared to contemporary "portable" PCs. They are 
also historically significant and just exude coolness.

For a display I have a large monitor and a gigantic (over 3 feet wide) 
fresnel lens that I got totally free; we were at the city dump, there was 
someone dropping off a dead projection TV, and we managed to talk them into 
letting us take the lens. It would've been a shame if it had ended up in a 
landfill. Aside from some dirt and a few scratches, it's perfect. I have yet 
to find a free monitor large enough to do it justice.

There, I'm done. Sorry if I got too ranty.

_________________________________________________________________
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! 
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/