[sdiy] Art of electronics computer

[Gordon JC Pearce]

On Mon, 9 Jan 2012 21:40:59 +0000
"Lanterman, Aaron" <lanterma at ece.gatech.edu> wrote:

> On Jan 9, 2012, at 4:08 PM, David G Dixon wrote:
> 
> > I don't know of a direct 'hex' driver chip that takes 4 bit  binary and outputs this character set. There ~was~ one (once) 
> > for hex on an LCD display.
> > 
> > The CD4511 is a good example of a driver that will NOT display hex characters. The "a" - "f" are blank...
> 
> When I do the history lecture in my "Electronics for Music Synthesis" class, I always talk about how musicians must have responded to working with the Ensoniq Mirage... ;)

Funny, I'm actually programming my Mirage right now as I catch up with this thread ;-)

It's fairly okay once you get used to its perhaps overly-simple user interface.  One funny thing is that the displays are multiplexed the "interesting" way round - the data lines enable the digit and the multiplex lines select the segment!  Since the multiplexing is done in software in the CPU idle loop, when the Mirage is busy (lots of tight high-pitched loops) the display multiplexing slows right down...

-- 
Gordon JC Pearce MM0YEQ <gordonjcp at gjcp.net>