LCD Display in the UK?

I want to get a LCD screen which I can use to mod my PC.

I've got a lot of free time in the coming weeks, and I want somthing to keep me busy. I want to do a LCD screen mod, so I can display all sorts of cool things on a LCD thing on the front of my machine (probably backlit).

I've had a look around on maplins... THIS seems to be the best they come with... and its not entirley clear whether I can actually interface one of those with my machine over the COM/LPT port. If is possible... the manual goes waay over my head.

Also, anyone know somthing interesting I can do with a cheap gamepad? Like, make some sort of groovy control box... or somthing... which I could hook up via USB to control somthing on my machine.

Hell, does anyone know some cheap mods that will keep me busy?

 

Brilliant. I've just found out that those LCD screens I was looking at on Maplins have the correct controller, so I will be able to use them, in conjunction with a paralell cable! Yay.

Ok, let me put my mod ideas past you.

1. LCD monitoring screen
Basically, I want to make a LCD box thing that can either be put in a drive bay, OR standalone. Plugs into paralell port.

The cool thing about this is that I can put it on my server, so that I can see whats going on with the server without having a monitor plugged into it. It already runs without keyboard, mouse or monitor plugged in, which is all well and good but it's a bit tricky to find out whats going on inside the thing if you have no way to get to the interface.

Here comes the interesting part though. I'm going to get a cheap USB gamepad, take it to bits and add some panel buttons to the unit. So, I can scroll through various different screens by pressing a button on the box. That means I can find out a whole load of interesting stuff without having anything plugged into it!

2. Midi bay mount
This should be fairly simple. I have a SBLive! sound card with midi in-out.. but its a gameport. What I want to do is make a drive bay unit so that I can plug in 5-pin DIMM midi plugs (standard midi ports) into the front of my machine, rather than having to mess about with the back of my machine (makes things a whole lot easier when I want to plug my MIDI keyboard in).

So the plan is, I'll get a gameport-midi cable.. cut off the ends and re-solder it to a 5-pin DIMM socket, which I'll then mount onto a drive bay panel. That way, I've got 3 midi ports on the front of my machine (in out and thru), ready to plug midi devices into.

Might add some other cool stuff to it as well (perhaps a level meter for soundcard output? maybe thats a bit more tricky...).

3. Paint the sides of my case with metalic/pearlescant paint
This is fairly straightforward. I'll go down to halfords and get some BMW Midnight blue touchup spray paint. I'll then prime, paint and laquer my side-panels. The cool part is, I'll get some other coloured metal paint as well, so that I can do some well cool decals on the side as well. Simple paint over it once its dry with masking fluid, spray over the metalic... take off the masking fluid and then laquer it all. That should give it a really nice even finish.

So what do ya think?

 

#3 is definetely the coolest idea, although both #1 and #2 serve a usefull purpose... I'd go with #2 & #3, heck you could paint all the drives too while you're at it

 

Ok I got the LCD screen today, and I've been busily mapping out the coloured wires to pins with my trusty multimeter, and now i get it all ready to solder and the bleedin soldering iron has run outta gas.

Oh why are paralell cables so fiddley!?

 

Hum.

I've got a Belkin Printer cable here... I'll write whats written on the cable :

Belkin Pro Series High Speed IEEE 1284 Compliant cable www.belkin.com US Patent No. Des. 396,689 RJ AWM W101344 Style 20276 80C 300V FT1

Its annoying because ive got to test every single wire in there to work out which colour wire goes to what pin. Its a long slow process fraught with error (for me anyway) and I was wondering whether theres somthing on the net with all the wire codes written down so i can just find the wires and solder them.

 

Heres a pic of it done in a 3D program called Sketchup.

 

Ok. Got the display. After re-soldering the pin connections for the 3rd time... it still doesnt work.

Basically, I'm pretty sure that its wired correctly. Heres the setup:
1 . Molex Black
2. Molex Red
3. Molex black
4. Pin 16
5. Molex Black
6. Pin 1
7. Pin 2
8. Pin 3
9. Pin 4
10. Pin 5
11. Pin 6
12. Pin 7
13. Pin 8
14. Pin 9

Heres the manual : http://www.maplin.co.uk/media/pdfs/N27AZ.pdf

As far as I can tell, everything is correct. Pin 16 I identified correctly. Solder joints are fine, tested for shorting and they're all fine. I've not hooked up the backlight YET, because it should work without it (the LED circuit is completley seperate)

Have a look at my post on a modding forum : http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=62786&page=1&pp=20

I'm so confused