LED moving message display - interfacing problems! RS232

P

princo coasters

Guest
I recently purchased some led message boards from auction and need some
information on them ..... hopefully someone here can help?

The signs are made by "LEISURE UNLIMITED AUSTRALIA" - LUA Electronics, and
are about 1.3 metres long - dot matrix single line RED display...30+ chars
(cant tell exactly as the characters use less than one LED block each)

When the signs are powered up, they simply display a 6 digit serial number
(same number as shown on the back of each unit - matches the units serial)
and then they just sit there displaying that number - I assume, waiting for
some valid commands.
Leisure Unlimited Australia, LUA Electronics used to be here:
LUA Electronics Pty Ltd. 11 Redwood Drv Notting Hill VIC 3168, but are shown
as a de-registered company on the AISC site, and obviously, nobody answers
the old phone number....yep - tried anyway!


I found some software I thought might control them here......

http://www.dorianstudios.net/Computer%20Electronics.htm

but so far, have had no luck!

I made up a serial port null modem cable after checking that the sign DB9
connector has only pins 2, 3 and 5 connected......but no joy.....tried a few
different types of null modem cable too.

By taking a peek inside the software, the only settings I could see were
9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit......so these are the settings I
have been using - although I have also tried others too with no luck.

The controller for the sign uses a TC232CPE level converter, an 8031
processor, one RAM chip (HY6264ALP-10) and a 27C64 EPROM.
I don't have anything else much that i can tell you about it, so I am hoping
that someone here has used them before, or might be able to help me
interface to it.

Would dumping the contents of the EPROM help to nut this out?? Anyone likely
to be able to make sense of it?


If any one has any software to use these or knows where i could get it from
it would be much apreciated.

If anyone could even jusdt point me in the way of someone who used to work
at this company that would be great too

Thanks in advance !
 
Nobody here has played with RS232 or 8031's?????

Anyone using a LED message sign at work? What brand is it? How is it
connected?


"princo coasters" <princo@makesgoodcoasters.com> wrote in message
news:46a72c1a$0$22253$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
I recently purchased some led message boards from auction and need some
information on them ..... hopefully someone here can help?

The signs are made by "LEISURE UNLIMITED AUSTRALIA" - LUA Electronics, and
are about 1.3 metres long - dot matrix single line RED display...30+ chars
(cant tell exactly as the characters use less than one LED block each)

When the signs are powered up, they simply display a 6 digit serial number
(same number as shown on the back of each unit - matches the units serial)
and then they just sit there displaying that number - I assume, waiting
for some valid commands.
Leisure Unlimited Australia, LUA Electronics used to be here:
LUA Electronics Pty Ltd. 11 Redwood Drv Notting Hill VIC 3168, but are
shown as a de-registered company on the AISC site, and obviously, nobody
answers the old phone number....yep - tried anyway!


I found some software I thought might control them here......

http://www.dorianstudios.net/Computer%20Electronics.htm

but so far, have had no luck!

I made up a serial port null modem cable after checking that the sign DB9
connector has only pins 2, 3 and 5 connected......but no joy.....tried a
few different types of null modem cable too.

By taking a peek inside the software, the only settings I could see were
9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit......so these are the settings
I have been using - although I have also tried others too with no luck.

The controller for the sign uses a TC232CPE level converter, an 8031
processor, one RAM chip (HY6264ALP-10) and a 27C64 EPROM.
I don't have anything else much that i can tell you about it, so I am
hoping that someone here has used them before, or might be able to help me
interface to it.

Would dumping the contents of the EPROM help to nut this out?? Anyone
likely to be able to make sense of it?


If any one has any software to use these or knows where i could get it
from it would be much apreciated.

If anyone could even jusdt point me in the way of someone who used to work
at this company that would be great too

Thanks in advance !
Click to expand...
 
princo coasters wrote:

Nobody here has played with RS232 or 8031's?????
Click to expand...
I'm sure at least some of us have played with RS232 and/or 8031's, just not
within the message board you outlined. And even if one hasn't, it really
doesn't matter anyway.

Anyone using a LED message sign at work? What brand is it? How is it
connected?
Click to expand...
The ones that I played with (a million years ago) were RS232-interfaced,
(back when RS232 was trendy), but you used a dumb terminal to talk to it.
Certain characters were used for control purposes, everything else
(alphanumerics) were used for display.

This doesn't help you of course, not only because can I not remember the
brand of the displays, no other brand might help either - simply because there
are no communications standards for these things.

I've heard of AT style keyboard connected interfaces, USB, parallel printer
port interfaced, you name it, I've "heard" of them all. All of them different
with the way one programmed the text.

Regardless, unless someone doesn't have that model you have and knows how to
drive it, nothing else will help.


I would be cynical of the usefulness of "looking under the bonnet" because
if you want to disassemble the code, by the time you go through it, it may
very well be cheaper to buy something off the shelf that has software and
instructions all nicely laid out for you.

When purchasing things like these, you really have to do your homework
first, otherwise you might be buying a vintage black box. Very nice, but
black boxes don't really do anything exiting by themselves.

Keep looking, you might get lucky and hear from someone that has used them.

Otherwise, it might be useful to stick a protocol analyser in there and see
if the boxes bounce any bytes back in response to your probing. It'll give
you an idea of the speed at least.
Failing all the above, some trial and error may be called for.

Good luck.
--
Linux Registered User # 302622
<http://counter.li.org>
 
On Jul 25, 8:55 pm, "princo coasters" <pri...@makesgoodcoasters.com>
wrote:
I recently purchased some led message boards from auction and need some
information on them ..... hopefully someone here can help?

The signs are made by "LEISURE UNLIMITED AUSTRALIA" - LUA Electronics, and
are about 1.3 metres long - dot matrix single line RED display...30+ chars
(cant tell exactly as the characters use less than one LED block each)

When the signs are powered up, they simply display a 6 digit serial number
(same number as shown on the back of each unit - matches the units serial)
and then they just sit there displaying that number - I assume, waiting for
some valid commands.
Leisure Unlimited Australia, LUA Electronics used to be here:
LUA Electronics Pty Ltd. 11 Redwood Drv Notting Hill VIC 3168, but are shown
as a de-registered company on the AISC site, and obviously, nobody answers
the old phone number....yep - tried anyway!

I found some software I thought might control them here......

http://www.dorianstudios.net/Computer%20Electronics.htm

but so far, have had no luck!

I made up a serial port null modem cable after checking that the sign DB9
connector has only pins 2, 3 and 5 connected......but no joy.....tried a few
different types of null modem cable too.

By taking a peek inside the software, the only settings I could see were
9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit......so these are the settings I
have been using - although I have also tried others too with no luck.

The controller for the sign uses a TC232CPE level converter, an 8031
processor, one RAM chip (HY6264ALP-10) and a 27C64 EPROM.
I don't have anything else much that i can tell you about it, so I am hoping
that someone here has used them before, or might be able to help me
interface to it.

Would dumping the contents of the EPROM help to nut this out?? Anyone likely
to be able to make sense of it?

If any one has any software to use these or knows where i could get it from
it would be much apreciated.

If anyone could even jusdt point me in the way of someone who used to work
at this company that would be great too

Thanks in advance !
Click to expand...
As John mentioned, it's a lot of effort to try and reverse engineer
something like that, and I wouldn't bother. Sounds like you've tried
the basics, so I'd give at that point.
What I *would* do however is to simply write new software for it from
scratch, that should be quicker than trying to decode what the old one
does. Either use the existing 8031 with a new ROM, or replace it with
the micro of your choosing. Should use all discrete hardware, so that
should be fairly easy to figure trace out and figure out how to drive
the LED's.

With your own software you get the benefit of making it do exactly
what you want, likely with more features than the original software
contained.

Dave.
 
On Stardate Wed, 25 Jul 2007 20:55:43 +1000, "princo coasters"
<princo@makesgoodcoasters.com> applied digits to the keyboard and
routed the information from some kind of brain (presumably), thusly:

I recently purchased some led message boards from auction and need some
information on them ..... hopefully someone here can help?

The signs are made by "LEISURE UNLIMITED AUSTRALIA" - LUA Electronics, and
are about 1.3 metres long - dot matrix single line RED display...30+ chars
(cant tell exactly as the characters use less than one LED block each)
Click to expand...
i came into posession of a sign like that for free, no keypad.

i found a sign shop that had a few old left over keypads to try.

several worked...one cost over 100 dollars.

9 pin connector was not serial port, some kind of matrix scanned
keypad.

When the signs are powered up, they simply display a 6 digit serial number
(same number as shown on the back of each unit - matches the units serial)
and then they just sit there displaying that number - I assume, waiting for
some valid commands.
Leisure Unlimited Australia, LUA Electronics used to be here:
LUA Electronics Pty Ltd. 11 Redwood Drv Notting Hill VIC 3168, but are shown
as a de-registered company on the AISC site, and obviously, nobody answers
the old phone number....yep - tried anyway!


I found some software I thought might control them here......

http://www.dorianstudios.net/Computer%20Electronics.htm

but so far, have had no luck!

I made up a serial port null modem cable after checking that the sign DB9
connector has only pins 2, 3 and 5 connected......but no joy.....tried a few
different types of null modem cable too.

By taking a peek inside the software, the only settings I could see were
9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit......so these are the settings I
have been using - although I have also tried others too with no luck.

The controller for the sign uses a TC232CPE level converter, an 8031
processor, one RAM chip (HY6264ALP-10) and a 27C64 EPROM.
I don't have anything else much that i can tell you about it, so I am hoping
that someone here has used them before, or might be able to help me
interface to it.

Would dumping the contents of the EPROM help to nut this out?? Anyone likely
to be able to make sense of it?


If any one has any software to use these or knows where i could get it from
it would be much apreciated.

If anyone could even jusdt point me in the way of someone who used to work
at this company that would be great too

Thanks in advance !
Click to expand...
Foley U. Matthews there | http://fumthings.blogspot.com/ Personal
are no e's in my true email | Automatic Transport for S.E. Queensland.
Visit the Ellen Foley Info | groceries online, home delivery.
http://www.go.to/ellen-foley | dislike football (Australian).
 
Hi!
Thanks for replies.....

This sign definately has a serial port - it has an rs232 level converter IC
and uses pins 2,3,and 5 of the 9 pin d socket (rs232 standard)

Havent yet been able to get anything on the sign, but have measured voltages
to make sure sign is getting the data, and converter is working.


Any other ideas?

Getting dump of EPROM tomorrow.





"Foley U. Matthews" <pteybiesla@biegeponed.ceom> wrote in message
news:46ad5f02.5864531@news.bigpond.com...
On Stardate Wed, 25 Jul 2007 20:55:43 +1000, "princo coasters"
princo@makesgoodcoasters.com> applied digits to the keyboard and
routed the information from some kind of brain (presumably), thusly:

I recently purchased some led message boards from auction and need some
information on them ..... hopefully someone here can help?

The signs are made by "LEISURE UNLIMITED AUSTRALIA" - LUA Electronics, and
are about 1.3 metres long - dot matrix single line RED display...30+ chars
(cant tell exactly as the characters use less than one LED block each)

i came into posession of a sign like that for free, no keypad.

i found a sign shop that had a few old left over keypads to try.

several worked...one cost over 100 dollars.

9 pin connector was not serial port, some kind of matrix scanned
keypad.


When the signs are powered up, they simply display a 6 digit serial number
(same number as shown on the back of each unit - matches the units serial)
and then they just sit there displaying that number - I assume, waiting
for
some valid commands.
Leisure Unlimited Australia, LUA Electronics used to be here:
LUA Electronics Pty Ltd. 11 Redwood Drv Notting Hill VIC 3168, but are
shown
as a de-registered company on the AISC site, and obviously, nobody answers
the old phone number....yep - tried anyway!


I found some software I thought might control them here......

http://www.dorianstudios.net/Computer%20Electronics.htm

but so far, have had no luck!

I made up a serial port null modem cable after checking that the sign DB9
connector has only pins 2, 3 and 5 connected......but no joy.....tried a
few
different types of null modem cable too.

By taking a peek inside the software, the only settings I could see were
9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit......so these are the settings
I
have been using - although I have also tried others too with no luck.

The controller for the sign uses a TC232CPE level converter, an 8031
processor, one RAM chip (HY6264ALP-10) and a 27C64 EPROM.
I don't have anything else much that i can tell you about it, so I am
hoping
that someone here has used them before, or might be able to help me
interface to it.

Would dumping the contents of the EPROM help to nut this out?? Anyone
likely
to be able to make sense of it?


If any one has any software to use these or knows where i could get it
from
it would be much apreciated.

If anyone could even jusdt point me in the way of someone who used to work
at this company that would be great too

Thanks in advance !


Foley U. Matthews there | http://fumthings.blogspot.com/ Personal
are no e's in my true email | Automatic Transport for S.E. Queensland.
Visit the Ellen Foley Info | groceries online, home delivery.
http://www.go.to/ellen-foley | dislike football (Australian).
Click to expand...
 
On Jul 31, 8:20 pm, "princo coasters" <pri...@makesgoodcoasters.com>
wrote:
Hi!
Thanks for replies.....

This sign definately has a serial port - it has an rs232 level converter IC
and uses pins 2,3,and 5 of the 9 pin d socket (rs232 standard)

Havent yet been able to get anything on the sign, but have measured voltages
to make sure sign is getting the data, and converter is working.

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
Yes, if you have the skills to decode the software in that EPROM, then
you have the skills to simply write your own software from scratch.
Hardware debug + your own software is probably the easiest way.

Dave.
 
Leisure Unlimited Australia, LUA Electronics used to be here:
LUA Electronics Pty Ltd. 11 Redwood Drv Notting Hill VIC 3168, but are shown
as a de-registered company on the AISC site, and obviously, nobody answers
the old phone number....yep - tried anyway!
Click to expand...

I have a suspicion that LUA morphed into Axent Global

<http://www.axent.com.au/>
 
David L. Jones wrote:

Yes, if you have the skills to decode the software in that EPROM, then
you have the skills to simply write your own software from scratch.
Hardware debug + your own software is probably the easiest way.
Click to expand...
Er, I think there's more to it than that. It's trivial to dump the EPROM
contents, then de-compile that with the relevant tools.

Making sense of all that comment-less code is a different ballgame altogether.

In the event it was complied with a higher level language, then the
assembler will make just a little less sense.
--
Linux Registered User # 302622
<http://counter.li.org>
 
"princo coasters" <princo@makesgoodcoasters.com> schreef in bericht
news:46af0cf0$0$31086$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
"Foley U. Matthews" <pteybiesla@biegeponed.ceom> wrote in message
news:46ad5f02.5864531@news.bigpond.com...
On Stardate Wed, 25 Jul 2007 20:55:43 +1000, "princo coasters"
princo@makesgoodcoasters.com> applied digits to the keyboard and
routed the information from some kind of brain (presumably), thusly:

I recently purchased some led message boards from auction and need some
information on them ..... hopefully someone here can help?

The signs are made by "LEISURE UNLIMITED AUSTRALIA" - LUA Electronics,
and
are about 1.3 metres long - dot matrix single line RED display...30+
chars
(cant tell exactly as the characters use less than one LED block each)

i came into posession of a sign like that for free, no keypad.

i found a sign shop that had a few old left over keypads to try.

several worked...one cost over 100 dollars.

9 pin connector was not serial port, some kind of matrix scanned
keypad.


When the signs are powered up, they simply display a 6 digit serial
number
(same number as shown on the back of each unit - matches the units
serial)
and then they just sit there displaying that number - I assume, waiting
for
some valid commands.
Leisure Unlimited Australia, LUA Electronics used to be here:
LUA Electronics Pty Ltd. 11 Redwood Drv Notting Hill VIC 3168, but are
shown
as a de-registered company on the AISC site, and obviously, nobody
answers
the old phone number....yep - tried anyway!


I found some software I thought might control them here......

http://www.dorianstudios.net/Computer%20Electronics.htm

but so far, have had no luck!

I made up a serial port null modem cable after checking that the sign DB9
connector has only pins 2, 3 and 5 connected......but no joy.....tried a
few
different types of null modem cable too.

By taking a peek inside the software, the only settings I could see were
9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit......so these are the
settings I
have been using - although I have also tried others too with no luck.

The controller for the sign uses a TC232CPE level converter, an 8031
processor, one RAM chip (HY6264ALP-10) and a 27C64 EPROM.
I don't have anything else much that i can tell you about it, so I am
hoping
that someone here has used them before, or might be able to help me
interface to it.

Would dumping the contents of the EPROM help to nut this out?? Anyone
likely
to be able to make sense of it?


If any one has any software to use these or knows where i could get it
from
it would be much apreciated.

If anyone could even jusdt point me in the way of someone who used to
work
at this company that would be great too

Thanks in advance !


Foley U. Matthews there | http://fumthings.blogspot.com/ Personal
are no e's in my true email | Automatic Transport for S.E. Queensland.
Visit the Ellen Foley Info | groceries online, home delivery.
http://www.go.to/ellen-foley | dislike football (Australian).

Hi!
Thanks for replies.....

This sign definately has a serial port - it has an rs232 level converter
IC and uses pins 2,3,and 5 of the 9 pin d socket (rs232 standard)

Havent yet been able to get anything on the sign, but have measured
voltages to make sure sign is getting the data, and converter is working.


Any other ideas?

Getting dump of EPROM tomorrow.
Click to expand...
The 8031 is an old workhorse with a UART inside. Once you have the hexdump,
you can run a disassembler over it and track down the serial communication
part. Finding out the path of the incoming data and command recognising is
the next step. It will take quite some time, but it can be done. I've done
similar things although not in the current century. No need to say you will
need the 8051 datasheet. It's only a 150 pages but you don't need to read
them all :)

petrus bitbyter
 
David L. Jones wrote:
As John mentioned, it's a lot of effort to try and reverse engineer
something like that, and I wouldn't bother. Sounds like you've tried
the basics, so I'd give at that point.
What I *would* do however is to simply write new software for it from
scratch, that should be quicker than trying to decode what the old one
does. Either use the existing 8031 with a new ROM, or replace it with
the micro of your choosing. Should use all discrete hardware, so that
should be fairly easy to figure trace out and figure out how to drive
the LED's.

With your own software you get the benefit of making it do exactly
what you want, likely with more features than the original software
contained.

Dave.
Click to expand...
not so sure about that Dave.

I did a moving message board (see Silicon Chip 1989, over 4 issues)

To assemble the text, make it move, calculate the next frame ahead, and
have it move up, down, left or right, then add all the scroll left,
right, up down, etc, etc.,

Then if you want animated 3 colour crocodiles, space vehicles,
telephones, flowers, etc, etc, as I did, it may take about 18 months of
your spare time. A part time labor of love.

If you just want to write "Happy Birthday" sure. That's how I started.

BTW Princo Coasters,
I used an XT keyboard for data input. That's what was popular and
convenient then. :)

Sure, yours is RS-232, if you can't reverse engineer the comms code,
scrap it, and buy a very cheap TW import.


Don...



--
Don McKenzie

Site Map: http://www.dontronics.com/sitemap
E-Mail Contact Page: http://www.dontronics.com/email
No More Damn Spam: http://www.wizard-of-oz.com

Serial OLED uses standard micro-SD memory cards.
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/product.php?productid=16659

USB Flash Drive interface for existing products.
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/product.php?productid=16654
 
On Aug 1, 7:12 am, Don McKenzie <l...@mysig.com> wrote:
David L. Jones wrote:
As John mentioned, it's a lot of effort to try and reverse engineer
something like that, and I wouldn't bother. Sounds like you've tried
the basics, so I'd give at that point.
What I *would* do however is to simply write new software for it from
scratch, that should be quicker than trying to decode what the old one
does. Either use the existing 8031 with a new ROM, or replace it with
the micro of your choosing. Should use all discrete hardware, so that
should be fairly easy to figure trace out and figure out how to drive
the LED's.

With your own software you get the benefit of making it do exactly
what you want, likely with more features than the original software
contained.

Dave.

not so sure about that Dave.

I did a moving message board (see Silicon Chip 1989, over 4 issues)

To assemble the text, make it move, calculate the next frame ahead, and
have it move up, down, left or right, then add all the scroll left,
right, up down, etc, etc.,

Then if you want animated 3 colour crocodiles, space vehicles,
telephones, flowers, etc, etc, as I did, it may take about 18 months of
your spare time. A part time labor of love.
Click to expand...
18 months is a long time. Assembler? Was most of your high level
functionality internal to the message board, or external to it like on
a PC?

With a high level language compiler and possibly some pre-written code
for the high level stuff (text-to-bitmap etc), it need only take a
fraction of that time. If you offload the high level stuff to the PC
then the actual LED message driving part of it becomes relatively
easy.

The problem PrincoCoasters might have though is that he might have to
do all that anyway. Even if he decodes the software and gets it to
talk he might find that the message board is nothing more than a low
level device which holds a bitmap image and scrolls it. i.e. it might
not have any ASCII to bitmap decoding built in, so he won't be able to
simply send it ASCII text and have it displayed. In that case a PC
application would have to be written anyway.

Dave.
 
David L. Jones wrote:

18 months is a long time. Assembler? Was most of your high level
functionality internal to the message board, or external to it like on
a PC?
Click to expand...
all z80 assembly Dave, and part time as I say.
Mind you, I just kept writing it until I was happy and exhausted all
possibilities. :)

started off as a single colour display, (Silicon Chip articles) but I
added alternate rows of red and green LEDs to produce orange as well, so
it became a 3 colour device.

http://www.dontronics.com/z80.html
has the code.

Don...



--
Don McKenzie

Site Map: http://www.dontronics.com/sitemap
E-Mail Contact Page: http://www.dontronics.com/email
No More Damn Spam: http://www.wizard-of-oz.com

Serial OLED uses standard micro-SD memory cards.
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/product.php?productid=16659

USB Flash Drive interface for existing products.
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/product.php?productid=16654
 
On Aug 2, 11:18 am, Don McKenzie <l...@mysig.com> wrote:
David L. Jones wrote:
18 months is a long time. Assembler? Was most of your high level
functionality internal to the message board, or external to it like on
a PC?

all z80 assembly Dave, and part time as I say.
Mind you, I just kept writing it until I was happy and exhausted all
possibilities. :)
Click to expand...
You might be interested (or relieved) to know you don't hold the
record for development time for a published project. I think that
honor goes to Peter Baxter's 100MHz Logic Analyser in EA which took in
the order of 5 years to develop, only to be narrowly beaten to
publication by my 40MHz Logic Analyser project by a couple of months!
(my one only took a few months to develop)

Dave.
 
"Don McKenzie" <look@mysig.com> schreef in bericht
news:46b130fb$0$25982$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
David L. Jones wrote:

18 months is a long time. Assembler? Was most of your high level
functionality internal to the message board, or external to it like on
a PC?

all z80 assembly Dave, and part time as I say.
Mind you, I just kept writing it until I was happy and exhausted all
possibilities. :)

started off as a single colour display, (Silicon Chip articles) but I
added alternate rows of red and green LEDs to produce orange as well, so
it became a 3 colour device.

http://www.dontronics.com/z80.html
has the code.

Don...



--
Don McKenzie

Site Map: http://www.dontronics.com/sitemap
E-Mail Contact Page: http://www.dontronics.com/email
No More Damn Spam: http://www.wizard-of-oz.com

Serial OLED uses standard micro-SD memory cards.
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/product.php?productid=16659

USB Flash Drive interface for existing products.
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/product.php?productid=16654
Click to expand...

Be aware that Z80 code differs widely from 8051 (8751, 8031) code. I used
both, ever wrote even disassemblers.

petrus bitbyter
 
On Aug 3, 3:15 pm, "princo coasters" <pri...@makesgoodcoasters.com>
wrote:
G'day!

Well, got the contents of one of the EPROMs dumped....and have run it
through a disassembler called "MCS51" - selecting the 8031 as the processor.

All dumps are the same except for the serial number of the sign which is
coded in line #103h and #104h

I have left out the code from #09BA - #1FFF as it is all blank/unused.

Is anyone able to suggest where I might find the serial port communication
protocol? I have programmed the 6809 a long time ago, and a bit of 8051 -
but VERY rusty.

Thanks in advance for any help!

*snip code*
Click to expand...

That isn't a lot of code, so my guess would be that there is no ASCII
or other fancy decoding built in, and the 8031 is a simply a "dumb"
controller that downloads a memory image from the serial port and then
scrolls it (or whatever). In this case you'll have to write your own
PC application to control it.
But that's just a guess of course.
Good luck decoding it.

Dave.
 
"princo coasters" <princo@makesgoodcoasters.com> wrote:

G'day!

Well, got the contents of one of the EPROMs dumped....and have run it
through a disassembler called "MCS51" - selecting the 8031 as the processor.

All dumps are the same except for the serial number of the sign which is
coded in line #103h and #104h

I have left out the code from #09BA - #1FFF as it is all blank/unused.

Is anyone able to suggest where I might find the serial port communication
protocol?
Click to expand...
I've never programmed a 8031 or any of its relatives, but after a
quick consultation with Mr G, I would guess it is at location 003B
(reference to SBUF, aka SFR 99 = Serial Data Buffer).

Could that be some 'command' decoding just beyond that?


Andy Wood
woodag@trap.ozemail.com.au
 
Yes, David, you are right......

There doesn't appear to be any "smarts" within the EPROM itself, and the
messages are all sent serially via the software I linked to in the original
post.

My problem is that the software fro the PC references the sign as "Sign
One" - "Sign Ten" or "Broadcast Transmit" - which sends out a message to all
signs in the list.
I think this sign has been named something non-standard, and/or it is not
controlled by 9600 buad, no parity, 1 stop, no h/s........but I have tried
many, many other combos.

Is there a way to work out what the EPROM is waiting to hear from the PC?

#003Bh certainly looks like it is addressing some form of comms, and there
are many references to port a and b in there.


Regards, and thanks to all for your input!



"David L. Jones" <altzone@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1186124796.999283.173700@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
On Aug 3, 3:15 pm, "princo coasters" <pri...@makesgoodcoasters.com
wrote:
G'day!

Well, got the contents of one of the EPROMs dumped....and have run it
through a disassembler called "MCS51" - selecting the 8031 as the
processor.

All dumps are the same except for the serial number of the sign which is
coded in line #103h and #104h

I have left out the code from #09BA - #1FFF as it is all blank/unused.

Is anyone able to suggest where I might find the serial port
communication
protocol? I have programmed the 6809 a long time ago, and a bit of
8051 -
but VERY rusty.

Thanks in advance for any help!

*snip code*

That isn't a lot of code, so my guess would be that there is no ASCII
or other fancy decoding built in, and the 8031 is a simply a "dumb"
controller that downloads a memory image from the serial port and then
scrolls it (or whatever). In this case you'll have to write your own
PC application to control it.
But that's just a guess of course.
Good luck decoding it.

Dave.
Click to expand...
 
"princo coasters" <princo@makesgoodcoasters.com> wrote in message
news:46b3b881$0$16207$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
Yes, David, you are right......

There doesn't appear to be any "smarts" within the EPROM itself, and the
messages are all sent serially via the software I linked to in the
original post.

My problem is that the software fro the PC references the sign as "Sign
One" - "Sign Ten" or "Broadcast Transmit" - which sends out a message to
all signs in the list.
I think this sign has been named something non-standard, and/or it is not
controlled by 9600 buad, no parity, 1 stop, no h/s........but I have tried
many, many other combos.

Is there a way to work out what the EPROM is waiting to hear from the PC?

#003Bh certainly looks like it is addressing some form of comms, and there
are many references to port a and b in there.


Regards, and thanks to all for your input!
Click to expand...

Sorry, I meant references to REGISTER a and REGISTER b, not port a/b
 
"princo coasters" <princo@makesgoodcoasters.com> wrote in message
news:46b3b8e0$0$7087$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
"princo coasters" <princo@makesgoodcoasters.com> wrote in message
news:46b3b881$0$16207$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
Click to expand...

You are sending TTL level 0 to 5V serial data aren't you? The on-chip
serial port does not send +12V to -12V signals.

I haven't read anything where you detail this bit of info.
 
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