Okay, so I wanted to get a display working on a MIPS system I was messing with. It wasn’t as straightforward as I initially thought, so I figured I’d jot down what I did, in case it helps someone else (or future me!).
First, I had to figure out what kind of display interface I even had. Was it some standard thing, or something totally custom? I dug through the documentation (which, let’s be honest, was a bit sparse) and eventually determined it was a parallel interface. Great, more wires!
Next, I grabbed a compatible display. I ended up using an old LCD I had lying around, the kind with the 16-pin header. I mean, who doesn’t have a box of random electronics parts, right?
Wiring it up…ugh
This was the fun part (sarcasm). I had to connect all those tiny wires from the MIPS board to the display. The pinout on the MIPS board wasn’t exactly clearly labeled, so it took some trial and error (and a few muttered curses) to get it right.
- I connected the power and ground wires first. Gotta have juice, obviously.
- Then, I started on the data lines. There were 8 of them (D0-D7), which I carefully connected one by one.
- Finally, I hooked up the control signals: RS, RW, and E. These basically tell the display what to do with the data.
Double, triple, and quadruple-checked all the connections. One wrong wire and poof…magic smoke. Nobody wants that.
Software Side of Things
With the hardware (hopefully) sorted, I moved on to the software. I needed to write some code to actually send data to the display.
I started by writing some basic initialization routines. This involved setting the display mode, clearing the screen, and turning the cursor on (or off, depending on what I wanted).
Then came the actual display functions. I wrote a simple function to send a single character to the display. This involved setting the RS and RW pins correctly, putting the character data on the data lines, and then toggling the E pin to latch the data in.
I built a small test program to display “Hello, MIPS!” on the screen. Crossed my fingers, loaded it onto the board, and…success! It actually worked! Seeing those words appear on the display was pretty satisfying, I gotta admit.
After a while, I tested out some more advanced features, like scrolling and custom character definitions, so that I could use display correctly.
It was a bit of a journey, but I finally got the display working. Hopefully, this little write-up helps someone else avoid some of the headaches I encountered. Remember to double-check those connections, and don’t be afraid to experiment!