Need big buttons?

[Chuck(G)]

I know that some here like building their own consoles, so I thought I'd post here (Admin: feel free to move this if you want).

One of my favorite electronics junk stores is selling 4-packs of Otis Elevator buttons for $5. Given that they're made for a heavy-use environment, they may be just the ticket for some aspiring Frankenstein's
project:

http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G19273

 

[mbbrutman]

The buttons are cool, and there are lots of other neat toys on that site. This caught my eye:

http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G17749

That looks like it should be reasonable to interface to a parallel port. Does anybody have any experience in doing that? (I have found application notes that describe the pinout and it looks doable.)

 

[glitch]

Yes, very easy to interface to parallel anything. Make sure it is HD44780 compatible. I've interfaced similar controllers to everything from my XT running BASIC to serial attached PIC microcontrollers driven from a PC or internal firmware.

There's a post somewhere of a display I'd interfaced to a s100computers Serial IO board.

 

[Chuck(G)]

The LCDHype forum is still around, as is LCDInfo and LCDStudio--you'll find what you need there, i'm sure. I found the hookup info to parallel port using the Toshiba 5343stldgytn module on LCDHype--the most important of which was to use a resistor in series with the backlight LEDs.

That Zilog app note you found probably has everything you need to know. Those small Wintek 1x24 displays are small enough to put in a small probe, along with an MCU and occasionally go on sale for 99 cents the each.