Support for Futaba display of FIC Spectra HTPC

[starlight]

I can confirm the Scaleo E problems. rc1 works well, rc2 tells no display found

peter

[rsbrux]

Originally Posted by JoeDalton

Did you try to right-click the plugin and choose the "Enabled" option? Just to be sure

, Joe,
Maybe I wasd too stupid to try this last time, but in the latest SVN, clicking on the greyed-out "Disabled" in the plug-in popup-menu changed it to "Enabled".
Judging from the history of this thread, I probably need Andrea's driver, but I just get a flashing red exclamation point, when I try to select it, and OK remains greyed out.
I have a Scaleo E, which I understand is based on the FIC Spectra platform.

[andreavb]

Sorry but, if you have a ScaleoE VFD I think you should select the "Fujitsu Siemens ScaleoEV VFD Display Driver", the driver I've added (FIC Spectra) is for a seven characters blue VFD...what's yours? if your display is a seven characters display maybe it has different VID and PID...to know this you should browse your hardware under USB devices and check properties of a "Composite Device" (or something similar) and tell us its VID and PID

hope this helps

[rsbrux]

I get the same red exclamation point for the Scaleo EV driver. The only one I can select is the old Futaba 0.2, however it doesn't seem to do anything. The display just shows "SCALEO E", no matter what MP is doing. The attached log excerpt suggests that the display was found, but that an additional SW component is needed:

2007-10-10 08:11:10.906250 [Debug][MPMain]: ExternalDisplay: Driver loading complete...
2007-10-10 08:11:10.953125 [Debug][MPMain]: ExternalDisplay: Requested type was found.
2007-10-10 08:11:10.968750 [Info.][MPMain]: ExternalDisplay: DriverLINX Port I/O Driver (needed for the choosen display type) not detected. Plugin not started!

I will need a little more help to find the PID and VID. I don't find anything like "Composite Device" in the "USB-Controller" branch of Device Manager, nor do I find this text anywhere in the registry.
The only interesting or informative entry I found in the registry was:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\FIC\Futaba VFD control program installation\1.802.000]

which presumably comes from having installed a package I downloaded from Siemens as "FSC_Scaleo_E_Display___1004183.zip".
The display is a blue dot-matrix display, and definitely has more than 7 characters ("SCALEO E" is already 8). According to the product flyer, the display is 2 lines x 18 characters, but I have never seen enough text on it to be able to confirm this.
Attached is an archive with source files of an application which can apparently address the Scaleo E display, in case you can find out the PID and VID from them.

[andreavb]

Futaba 0.2 display driver is a parallel port driver (for this reason it needs DriverLINX Port I/O Driver) used with some Futaba display, I don't think it is your! to find your VID and PID you should right click "My Computer" -> popup menu "Manage" -> List View "Hardware"...I don't know the exact name since I have an Italian operating system...anyway once you're inside your hardware configuration (should be a treeview with all peripherals installed) open USB Controller Node and for every USB device right click, select Properties and then Details tab, select Hardware ID from combo box and tell us the VID and PID values you see for every USB device...so we can identify your VFD driver, maybe it is the same with a different PID and VID

[rsbrux]

This seems to be it:
DM-140GINK Demo
VID: 1509
PID: 925d

[andreavb]

If yours is a DM-140GINK then it is already supported by External Display Plugin...just take a look at the driver's list...there's one specific for this display

[rsbrux]

Hi Andrea,
I noticed this, but this one also gives me the exclamation point and refuses to enable "OK".
Thanks for your help!
Roger

[starlight]

Hello rsbrux and andreavb,
i can confirm rsbrux observation. My Scaleo has the same data and problems.

peter

[andreavb]

If someone can confirm VID and PID we can try to add a driver for your display...one thing I don't understand is if in RC1 it was working and now is broken or if you are asking for supporting a new device, in the case it was working in previous release there is something that was lost during updates and we need to find what it is in order to restore it. If it's for a new driver then we can do it knowing PID and VID exactly and what kind of display (name or type) it is just to give it the correct name!