SparkFun Forums

[arix]

Hi,
I've received 4 LCDs of Nokia 6100 type from China, but they seem to be modified. I can't understand the pinout, as it is not working neither with the code example for Philips controller nor of the Epson one.

The usual pinout in documentation is this:


What is printed beside the connector of Chinese Nokia LCD is this:


Next strange to me, is the 9th and 10th pin. I must be able to connect +6.5 to it for back light (BL) but two of my LCDs burnt when doing that The situation with them is that if I connect 3.3v regulated, they light on in pale blue that I still can't say the LCD is turned on. If I connect 5v regulated, the light deceases! May be these LCDs are modified having a booster and works with 3.3v for BL.

I next connected it to Arduino, used tutorial code for Philips controller from Arduino playground, but it didn't work. Seems nothing changing. Then I downloaded Epson code to Arduino and wired as explained, but also didn't work (even though the LCD started to blink very lightly and fast).

Reading whole lots of posts on forums didn't help as no kind of tutorial code I found still helps with these LCDs and no post on forums was exactly to discover the difference of Chinese Nokia 6100 with the original one.

Please give some ideas, how I can make sure what the controller is, and put the LCD to work.

[cpolley]

Two points:
1) You will burn out the backlight if you directly connect a voltage source to the two backlight pins ... a current limiting resistor is required. Of the top of my head I can't tell you what voltage the backlight runs or what current it wants to see, but you should find all of that in Jim Lynch's tutorial.

2) These displays are great for the price, but the major problem is the inconsistent drivers. Read all the comments on the Sparkfun product page and you'll pick up on the 4 or so variants that people have found. If none of those work for you, you are sadly on your own.

[arix]

Further experiments gave more interesting result and I can summary all here:

On Chinese LCD, pinout is backward numbered, i.e. pin 1 is 10, 2 is 9, etc. but this is only numbering!

Connecting the 10th pin to VCC for BL and 9th go GND gives no result, which must give, as according to documentations all around about this LCD online, they are VCC and GND of BL. At the same time, connecting 1st pin (the VCC of logic on documentations) and 2nd (must be RESET), turns the back light on, that is behaves as if "only the numbering is backward written but the functions are based on original documentations".

To prove this idea, I connected pins as written in documentations and run codes of all existing tutorials. Nothing works!

1. if this pinout is nonstandard, well, then how Chinese are claiming that this LCD is to repair Nokia 6100, 6610, etc. LCDs? Could we beleive that "all" Chinese sellers on Ebay are giving wrong info? No, in my opinion. Then why the LCD didn't work with any tutorial I've tried in some 3 days?

2. if the LCD is to work as the original Nokia, why then 3.3v turns back light on, and going to 5v make it more pale instead of making it lighter? This tells us about the voltage booster? Who knows please?

3. could anybody help me advance out of this problem point please?