Out of general curiosity - who makes the VFD in the Empeg? Does Noritake make them? I found this: http://www.bit-tech.net/review/120/

Apparently you can buy a VFD to fit in a 5 1/4 drive bay as a case mod - and the VFD looks the exact same as the one in the empeg. Its been a while since I had my empeg open (to add an hd) and don't remember what the back of the VFD display board looks like... but there is a picture of the casemod one at that link.

Thought it was an interesting find.

Yep, that's the one.

pca

Yes, if I recall correctly, the VFD used in the empeg was in fact the Noritake brand. Don't know if it's the exact same one as the one in the case mod you're talking about or not.

The article he linked shows the fill nipple in a different place than the one on the car player, though?

Hmm, just looked around Noritake's web site...they have some interesting multicolor technologies in development - unfortunately it looks like custom-design only at the moment.

What I really want is one of their standard graphic displays with their variable color technology applied to the whole display. This'd make it easy to retrofit to a well-known device...

Well, almost - it's only 126x32 (strange) though the fill nipple is in the same place as the MN12832J (we use the 'E', the 'J' has the fill nipple in the middle and shorter legs).

Possibly the glass is actually the 128x32 but for some other reason they've dropped the far left & far right strips - they are dealt with differently & maybe they ran out of room in their microcontroller?

Hugo