Was thinking today that I'd love to take apart one of my receivers, remount it in a different case (the power cord falls out of the unit, its such a bad connection) and perhaps add a much much larger display.

Not having popped it open in a LONG time, I'm curious if anyone else has given this a shot, and what they found.

Is the display programmed based on its physical size? or is it dynamic for font, etc? Would adding a different type of display such as a touchscreen TFT lcd be impossible?
could I wire the screen coords into the button inputs possibly?

Wonder if any part of the units software or hardware would ever be released to the public domain, as its rather unsupported now.

Just some random wandering thoughts.

Hugo (altman) has talked about the display hardware hear before.

http://rioreceiver.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Board=Technical&Number=779
http://rioreceiver.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Board=general&Number=3283
http://rioreceiver.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Board=Technical&Number=1543

In one of the he says even he doesn't have schematics for the display.

Software isn't a problem, the imporant bit of the software (the Linux kernel and drivers) is already available. We have third party server software and client software for the Receiver itself that more that replaces the software that comes with the unit.

I suspect the easiest way to improve the display would be to use a serial driven VFD display (that some people on the empeg board are starting to use as external displays). There is a serial port available on the mainboard (you just need to add extra hardware to make it have RS-232 levels).

You could then either:

- patch the kernel to mirror what is on the normal screen onto the serial screen
- patch one of the third party clients to write direct to the serial screen

Hugo (altman) has talked about the display hardware hear before.


Damn...I feel like Bitt.