So I got my new VFD!
Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2003 12:43 pm
Today I was finally able to play with my new VFD (VK-204-25). So far, I've not done anything particularly adventurous with it. Most of my time was spent locating a suitable power supply and building an adaptor with the correct cable at the end. There was a heart-stopping moment when I first powered it up and nothing happened save a faint hum (I really thought I'd fried it), but the next time I tried it worked like a dream. (I'm not using my VFD inside a computer, so power wasn't as easily available
)
The text is really clear, even more than the photos show. I'm not sure as yet whether I prefer it with or without the blue filter that I bought. Certainly the writing is a lot less green than I feared - it's basically white with a hint of green.
I've only really played with it in Hyperterminal so far. And in that, I'm not entirely sure how to send the various control codes, so I've only tried text. Next I'm going to break out QBasic and see if I can code up something useful for it to do. (Yeah, I know, it's not a real programming language, etc, etc. But it'll do for now, and it's built into Windows 3.1, which is important. Mebbe I'll graduate to PHP or C sometime.)
Amorya

The text is really clear, even more than the photos show. I'm not sure as yet whether I prefer it with or without the blue filter that I bought. Certainly the writing is a lot less green than I feared - it's basically white with a hint of green.
I've only really played with it in Hyperterminal so far. And in that, I'm not entirely sure how to send the various control codes, so I've only tried text. Next I'm going to break out QBasic and see if I can code up something useful for it to do. (Yeah, I know, it's not a real programming language, etc, etc. But it'll do for now, and it's built into Windows 3.1, which is important. Mebbe I'll graduate to PHP or C sometime.)
Amorya