🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <182@serene.UUCP>, gbell@pnet12.cts.com (Greg Bell) writes:
> 
>     Also, what good single chip display controllers are there around?  I'm
> looking to interface a 16 segment, 16 character LED or LCD alphanumeric
> display, and I would really prefer that the 8031 I'm using in the project
> could spend its time doing things other than refreshing a display.
>  
>                                                                  GBell

  I built an intelligent controller based on the 8031 family a few
years back and had exactly the same requirements (as well as monetary
constraints ;-) and after much research I used the EPSON family of 
LCD displays.
  The actual device I used was the EA-Y20025AZ (20x2 character display with
dot matrix format).  The beauty of this device is that it is a stand alone
logical block.  The device consists of; complete ASCII character set (as
well as character definition capabilities), single +5V supply, 8 bit data 
bus, standard control signals (ie R/W, Enable, external contrast adjustment),
on-board display ram and it supports many high level s/w commands (Clear 
Display, Return Home, cursor placement and control, auto-increment/decrement 
data buffer entry, read/write from Data RAM and many more).  This particular 
display is relatively cheap (CAN$70 3 years ago) and is only one of a 
family of devices (from 16x1 to 80x4 characters with provisions for easily
cascading multiple displays, also dedicated numerical displays are available).
The quality of the display is excellent (although I can't say the same for the 
Canadian distributors!) and it has been in constant use (24 h/day 365 d/yr) 
for the last 3 years with out any problems...I recommend them highly.

	Just as a side note - if you are going to be doing any S/W 
development for the 8031 family, and are going to be using a PC as
the development system then I would recommend investigating AVOCET's
8031/51/71 cross-assembler and simulator.  I used these tools to 
develop the 6000 lines of assembler code required for my controller. The 
simulator allowed me to develop the S/W and H/W concurrently:- the
system code (approx 95% bug free) was ready before the H/W was completed.
They can be contacted (for a product catalog) at: 

        AVOCET Systems Inc.
        P.O Box 490
        120 Union Street
        Rockport, Maine 04856

Of course I am nothing other than a satisfied customer (of both AVOCET and
EPSON).

Darel.

-- 
Darel Mesher				...!uunet!mnetor!maccs!darel
McMaster University			    darel@maccs.mcmaster.ca