[Lcdproc] Re: Cobalt Raq 3 and 4 LCD Garbage text usually but occasionally clear.

[David W Studeman]

David W Studeman wrote:

>  Hello folks. As I mentioned in a previous post. I am working on a project
> that uses the IPCop firewall distribution to convert old Raq3 and 4i and r
> models to a firewall rather than a server. The Axent Velociraptors which
> later became Symantec Velociraptors at least up through model 1100 were
> also based on this hardware platform we call Raq Gen III. As some of you
> know,these units have a HD44780 compatible KS0066U chip feeding a 16x2
> character lcd display with 5x8 dots per character.
>  I searched the web and did find a hd44780-cobalt lcdproc driver written
>  by
> Duncan Laurie back in 2004 and a patch to patch with. Duncan was one of
> the original Cobalt LCD and utility folks, programmer or developer, I'm
> not sure. I did get it to compile after running autogen after patching it.
> The only error I had originally was in hd44780-cobalt.c where no argument
> was given at common_init(p); I later changed that to common_init(p,
> IF_8BIT); and it compiled. It is on line 63. Anyway, it compiles and it
> loads using the cobalt option rather than winamp etc. It doesn't clear the
> garbage though. I've delayed the multi all the way up to 125 where it
> paints it so slow it fades in and also played with other parameters. I
> have had occasional clearness of text but not this weekend yet.
>  IPCop is based on LFS and the encoding is unicode as near as I can tell.
> Patching the kernel to run IPCop on the Raq units was the easy part. And
> for lcdproc I simply do not compile the embedded cobalt lcd driver into
> the kernel itself as all the cobalt drivers are there and then it frees
> the parallel port for lcdproc. I made a developer version of IPCop by
> compiling it myself and leaving the build environment intact so I can
> compile and install in the raq unit itself and uninstall, build again and
> so forth with ease.
>  I'm curious as to why this was heavily discussed 4 years ago or so and
>  then
> it got quiet with almost no mention of lcdproc on a cobalt raq since.
> Duncan gpl'ed what he had and luckily a mirror of his old iceblink.org
> still exists so I have the code. They are attached here, the diff is
> obviously outdated although I did hack it a bit. There's really only three
> files that need editing anyway plus dropping the two driver sources
> in /server/drivers.
>  Sorry my posts are so freaking long, Thanks for your time!
> 
> Dave

I also found that the actual lcd assembly itself is a Goldentek GC-1602 unit
in these Gen III Cobalt Raq units. This is the closest datasheet I could
find.
http://www.goldentek.com/english/pdf/Dongguan/GC1602A0/GC1602A0SBL1B%20.pdf

 Dave