Small LCD on USB?

[Veland]

I've got a small 16*2 LCD display showing winamp songtitles and such. My problem is this:

The display is connected to the parallel port
So is my scanner, and it's daisy chained to my printer

My options:
1. Get a serial->parallel converter to hook my display up to the com port. I have a big catalog of parts, but need a guide on what parts I need. I can probably figure out the rest myself

2. Get a USB->parallel converter. I can buy this fairly cheap. What would then work best; using it on my scanner/printer or my display? The problems I can see is that having both scanner and printer might mean it's using some sort of sending the usb converter won't understand. On the other hand, the display is hard coded as far as I know, maybe it won't work then.

3. Get a second parallel port. But it's taking up an extra slot, and nobody likes that!

4. Buy a new scanner and printer. I would really like to, but it's that thing again... Money!

Other ideas? Questions?

[Veland]

*bump*

anyone?

Also, when usin LCDcenter it "times out" after exactly 2 minutes. I get a "memory address not available" (or something like that) after 120 seconds. Can start LCDcenter again with the same result. I'm thinking either some buffer gets full, or maybe windows won't let a prog controll the LPT for longer? Any ideas for that?

[Veland]

:eh?: *bump*

Again!

Guess not many are using LCD panels around here.. But it's alwas nice talking to myself :) :eh?:

[touser]

i'm sorry i do not know the answer your question :( but i was wondering where you bought the lcd you are using from and what kind it was? as i am looking to do the exact same thing!

[Veland]

I bought mine from Elfa (http://www.elfa.se) but that's located in Sweden..
On LCDdriver (http://lcdriver.pointofnoreturn.org/lcds.html) you can find a lot of good info. Other than that, just search! If you find a display, ocmod had a good tutorial up some time ago.

[SEALen]

It would probably be best if ya put the scanner and printer on the usb. All new usb -> parallel konverters do support bi-directional printers so you should have no problems there I think. I doubt connecting the lcd to the usb converter would work to good though since it's hard coded to the printerport...

Myself I use a Matrix Orbital 2041 LCD wich is connected to the serial port wich is much better since nothing else needs to be connected to that port anymore (modems is a thing of the past :)

It's alot more expensive than the Elfa one though...

[Veland]

Your first post too! Welcome!

*Jeg kan vel si velkommen, så du var fra nabolandet*

I know, direct parallell wired is not the best solution. But it was real easy to make.. But I'm looking for another solution, either serial or usb based, so I'll keep looking.

If anybody has good links to "how to" articles, I'd be real happy to hear about them!