Advice needed on SBC

[Floopy]

Michael wrote:

Floopy wrote:

... I'm currently running the LCD with an 8 bit data bus and 3 extra lines for the control pins. If I could reduce it down to just 4 bit (send two 4 bit instructions instead of one 8 bit) then I could use the extra I/O on the VIA for exterior control.

Have you considered using an LCD "Backpack"? The PCF8574 based I2C backpacks work well, too.

Thank you! With that in mind I only need three pins to control as many displays as I need. My programming skills is usually what lacks behind.

[GARTHWILSON]

Floopy wrote:

I'm currently running the LCD with an 8 bit data bus and 3 extra lines for the control pins. If I could reduce it down to just 4 bit (send two 4 bit instructions instead of one 8 bit) then I could use the extra I/O on the VIA for exterior control.

Remember you can use the same lines for other things as well. The LCD doesn't care what's on its D0-D7 and RS and R/W\ when its E is false; so go ahead and use them as outputs to a parallel printer and to strobe the rows of a keyboard for example. These won't care what's on those lines when you're feeding the LCD either. Again, you can put loads of things on the same VIA at the same time.

[Floopy]

Hello hello,
I'm somewhat back, I've been the worst at updating things on here. I've been away for a year and I didn't have what I needed to keep going with this, but now that's not the case

So, I've mostly worked on programming and I'm still not very good, Being more efficient at what it does is something that needs to be improved, but the more I learn the more versatile this thing is getting. I've managed to somehow figure out on how to use shift registers and now I have a lot more outputs to work with. I get a lot of instability with Flash memory so I switched back to using Eproms. Which takes a lot longer to work with. (Maybe I sound like I'm impatient, who knows).

Currently I'd like to redesign the board and make something I can mount in something and take it where I need to. With a few additions and also fix the tiny messes I had to patch in the first board. Most are mechanical improvement, but I want to have a 6551, I've got a few.

Just an update.
-Thank you