Any news on a replacement Microvision sceen?

[DocktaCake]

So about a year ago I purchased a Microvision. It was for a decent price. The seller said it was "as is". I got it and the screen didn't work, and I figured out it was a common problem. Has anyone found a replacement screen yet?

[RevEng]

It's a common problem indeed.

 

Nobody manufactures screens to this spec anymore. I think a full console guts replacement with a modern screen is more likely... that's not as bad as it sounds, since the CPU is in each game.

 

But I haven't heard of any such projects.

[BigO]

I wired in an external, relatively huge 80 x 80 LCD (5 columns, 5 rows bridged) and mounted the whole thing on a piece of plywood. It works, but there are a few drawbacks.

 

A few years ago, I did a lot of searching and emailing to try to find a 16x16 bare glass LCD that would work as a replacement. I had no luck, but did find some Chinese manufacturers that appeared to be able to make new parts. I was sure enough that I'd lose a ton of money that I didn't investigate pricing.

[7800fan]

Can you explain how you interfaced LED matrix to Microvision? There are very small 8x8 LED matrixes like this one: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 181085288063 and I am sure there are smaller ones. So it is possible to get a 16x16 LED matrix in about the same space as original LCD.

[BigO]

If you're referring to me, I hooked up an LCD, not LED.

 

Driving 256 LED's would be a much bigger task. For one thing, the 16 rows and 16 column lines are reversing polarity constantly as required for proper LCD operation. That might make it a challenge to read those lines directly. A 9 volt battery isn't going to do that job for long either.

 

Having said that, I did briefly consider trying to drive a physically large 16 x 16 array hanging on a wall. Though power hungry, driving incandescent bulbs would help simulate the persistence of the LCD. Would work well enough to play Blockbuster, but anything with more meaningful overlays would be more challenging to play. I suppose Bowling wouldn't be too bad.

 

I never got past the "thinkin' about it" stage. That's a pretty common pattern of behavior for me.

[DocktaCake]

I really think someone should contact a manufacturer though. I mean one could make a lot by reselling these screens. I mean I have seen requests for replacement screens from over ten years ago, so I don't think it will ever happen . Oh well, guess my Microvision will just stay broken on the shelf, never to be played again.

[BigO]

I really think someone should contact a manufacturer though. I mean one could make a lot by reselling these screens. I mean I have seen requests for replacement screens from over ten years ago, so I don't think it will ever happen . Oh well, guess my Microvision will just stay broken on the shelf, never to be played again.

I understand the sentiment and I don't doubt that there's some demand out there. I have a couple of dead units myself that I'd like to revive some day.

 

Based on my experience attempting to source some 500K to 1Megohm thumbsticks for a custom controller project, the required parts count would be into the thousands for a custom run of anything. Without doing actual legwork, I tend to believe that my capital would be tied up for longer than I'd be comfortable with.

 

If it were a matter of buying 1000 units for a $1.00 each, marking them up a fair amount and reselling them over time, I would probably do it just for the sake of the hobby. But, I don't believe the pricing would fall into any range that I'd be comfortable with. I really don't think there'd be a huge profit opportunity. Am I cynical and overly cautious by nature? You betcha, boy. And I'm cheap, too.

 

Feel free to check it out and let us know what a manufacturer can offer. For funding, there's always Kickstarter.

 

Don't lose hope. I have picked up Microvisions fairly cheap that ended up working.

[ArcadeJunkie]

I would be willing to buy a replacement screen for around $30 or so if anyone has any ideas about a supplier. I know that a good quality replacement would help to increase the longevity for those who are fans of the console. Anyone actively working on finding a source to manufacture?

Edited April 3, 2016 by ArcadeJunkie

[cowdog360]

Seems like a fairly easy thing to do would to take an arduino and read in the screen data from the original chip, and spit it out to a black and white old Nokia cell phone display.

if I had time, I'd try to figure it out

Edited April 7, 2016 by cowdog360

[7800fan]

On Microvision, there is LCD controller chip that sits between LCD and the cart connector. Microvision is an odd one that has CPU on cartridge rather than on mainboard with just the ROM on carts.

 

If someone has the cart pinout and information on how CPU communicates with LCD controller chip, this can be done with Arduino, CPLD, or something. Pretty sure you'd need at minimum 1284p for Arduino, the smaller 328p has only 20 I/O lines and it'd need shift register to handle 16x16 display (32 lines minimum) plus CPU lines.

[RevEng]

Dan B's site has the pin-outs. At some point I tracked down the Hughes LCD driver docs too...

 

LCD - H0488.pdf

 

I always envisioned a replacement using an inexpensive TFT LCD with an SPI interface. That way you could have fancy options like having no space between the blocks, adjustable colors, pseudo color "overlay", etc. I know SPI is slower, but I think in this case it would probably be fast enough.

 

[edit - ah, you mean input. Yeah, you'd need shift registers for smaller microcontrollers]

[7800fan]

only 6 lines from CPU to LCD controller. If someone can understand how that worked it'd be fairly easy to make a custom adapter to use a modern LCD panel like those dirt common I2C square LCD panels. Or use LED matrix instead for nighttime playing.

[+5-11under]

Kind of like this... http://atariage.com/forums/topic/250994-microvision-screen-replacement/

/uses microcontroller and modern LCD screen.