Let me know if you have any additional questions about Character LCDs. I've been using the HD44780 Hitachi-compatible units since ~1990 in multiple platforms.

Quote from: JKnightandKARR on Today at 01:27 AMwhat is NAS btw??

NAS = Network Attached Storage

Ever since I moved to CA I've always had at least one NAS drive on my network configured for RAID 1 (mirroring). It allows me to access all my data from any computer on the network, as well as control what type of access of computer has to that data.

I started off with Buffalo LinkStation 220 2TB, then added a second one, but now I have two WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra 4TB each. I also created a Raspberry Pi 5 NAS Drive 2TB, however I haven't finished configuring the software on it yet.

RAID 1 (mirroring) writes all data to multiple hard drives at the same time, providing redundancy. If a disk should fail, you simply replace it and the NAS will restore the data back to the replacement disk. You can still continue to access the good copy while the bad disk is being replaced. This is how I have prevented losing any data for nearly 20 years now.

Before having a NAS drive, I used to use a File Server, but NAS drives simplify things and you can access the internal settings and configure them from a web browser on the network. For example, if your NAS drive has an IP address of 10.10.10.2, you simply type that into your web browser and you can sign in and access the settings pages.

One thing to note is that most NAS drives list the total capacity, because you can use different RAID modes (not just 1). So if you buy a system that has two 4 TB drives and you use RAID 1, you still only have 4 TB of space, because the drives are mirror images of each other.

I've had similar issues with my Netjoke router... they wouldn't honor the 1yr free replacement... which still had a short time, kept trying to tell me that its not the router, but bad cable or something.... ODD.....since I got Linksys router, I've had ZERO issues with the 2G and/or 5G bands dropping connection.... hmm.... sounds like router to me.... 

what is NAS btw??

Quote from: JKnightandKARR on Jan 19, 2025, 12:15 AMFirst off anyone needing/wanting new drives......  RUN AWAY FROM WESTERN DIGITAL!!!!!!!!

So, I used to be a Seagate fan circa 1994. Over the years the warranty policy changed and I moved to Western Digital. But then the average HD capacity was 80MB. I stuck with WD until they reduced their warranty and Seagate increased theirs. I think that was circa 2001. At some point I went back to WD, however, since then I have had failures and issues with support.

I also had issues with relation to their NAS drives, of which I have two! I got better support from the community on the forums than from the company itself. It turns out they kept changing the firmware on the NAS drives and the newer firmware seemed to indicate that a drive was failing at the end of it's warranty period, even if if was fine. This really irritated me and wasted time with me sending in drives for warranty coverage, getting remanufactured replacements, only to have those be flagged as bad as well.

In the end, the solution was to roll back the firmware and not allow the NAS to update itself. It's sad that this happened, and from the messages I got on the forums from other members, it has happened to MANY others! To add insult to injury, recently WD notified me that legacy HD and SSD would be two different branches of WD. Support is split as well. I'm going back to Seagate eventually. In the mean time I switched my SSDs to Samsung.

First off anyone needing/wanting new drives......  RUN AWAY FROM WESTERN DIGITAL!!!!!!!!.......  I got a Dell Inspiron 17 5765 gaming laptop, Win 10.  Well after sometime, the original HDD started to die.  System running, but SLOW and Task Manager HDD status ALWAYS 100%, so replaced with a SSD, got Win 10 in, n few other things, drivers ect, and set aside, well misplaced the power cord, so sat till I found it...  Upon powering up, now stuck at Dell logo, find out drives bad.... literally NO USE....  New drive later, back up, trying to install Win10, DONE, and Ubuntu on other partition I made....  that's becoming a PAIN.... rant off...

Quote from: JKnightandKARR on Jan 15, 2025, 11:56 PMYeah... mines gotta be parallel. lol

Parallel displays are great for Z80 / 6502 or similar CPUs, but not  great for microcontrollers which have limited I/O pins. The absolute minimum to run a parallel LCD is six I/O pins and even that involves properly timed commands and no ability to read data back from the display (including the busy flag). Seven I/O pins will give you better control, but you're still running in 4-bit mode requiring two transactions per command / data write.

You can easily add a serial, I²C or SPI backpack to an LCD to make it easier, or you can use a shift register to reduce I/O pins, but further complicate the unidirectional communication.  In post #9 above you can see the I²C backpack added to a standard parallel display to make it more friendly for microcontrollers such as the Arduino.

Yeah... mines gotta be parallel. lol

Quote from: JKnightandKARR on Jan 14, 2025, 11:32 PMI will have to look actually. not sure. never messed with them.

Yeah, just look at the connections on the back, for example, the one I referenced looks like below. The SDA / SCL tells me it's an I2C interface. If it had MISO / MOSI and / or a CS line, it would probably be SPI. RX (and possible TX) would be serial. And of course, if it has a 10, 14 or 16 pin interface, that's parallel. 

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I will have to look actually. not sure. never messed with them.

Quote from: JKnightandKARR on Jan 14, 2025, 10:23 AMGota ya. Would have to try n find out who made them... came in arduino type kits

Many displays for the Arduino are I²C or SPI. Are you sure these are serial? In fact, in this thread on the ZappBots forums, I posted about the following display, which is I²C and even showed some love to ZappBots on the display.

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