Since I got
my large LCD working with the 83+ I've been looking through old electronics and parts I had and found some
VFDs by NEC (looks like early 90s, maybe even late 80s). In case you don't know VFD stands for vacuum fluorescent display. They were used in e.g. calculators, audio equipment and automobiles. Today, most of them are replaced by the much cheaper LCDs, but they look awesome and are readable from any angle
So I figured out how to hook them up to an arduino, which was really simple because of its built-in serial interface. You can control everything just with one wire and ground. Well, that should make it possible to use it with the link port of the 83+, right? I wrote my own Axe routine to transmit Data serially at about 9600 baud (it works, that is everything that counts
). It was a lot of trial and error and I had to try out a lot of different delay values to make it work.
The display has an external power supply (5V, 200mA); 2.5 mm connector: tip or ring is connected to pin 33, sleeve to any ground pin on the connector
I know it can be optimized and made cleaner, but it does the job
