Programmable Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD)

An anonymous reader writes "There is a review of a programmable Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD). It is used to monitor computer related stats e.g. temperture, voltages, uptime etc. The article can be found here. Looks like an interesting toy!"

Comments

Pr0n Meter

[syntap]

Now you can watch your hard drive space count down to nothing in real time!

Odd....

[cybermace5]

It's kind of interesting, how these case displays seem to be so popular.

I have a vaccuum flourescent display on my machine right now. It's multi-colored and large, so large that it needs a separate case and power supply. It displays cpu stats, news, weather, even games!

Hopefully, these case kiddiez will discover the wonder of this thing called a "monitor." One thing at a time, I suppose.

Register lights! I want register lights!

[dpbsmith]

What we REALLY need is a 32 by 8 array of lamps--preferable incandescent--that will display, at all times, the contents of the general-purpose regsisters, another group for the segment registers, another for the EIP...

...and a way to connect a speaker to the high bit of register 0 so we can hear it "thinking..."

...and, of course a "speed" pot, and a 9-position "speed decade" pot that allow us to adjust the clock speed anywhere from 1 to 1000000000 Hz so you can see the instructions executing...

and a nice D'Arsonval analog CPU speed meter that displays the number of instructions per second that are actually being processed.

Then we can have contests to write programs that turn all the lights out, turn all the lights on, make interesting patterns in the lights, etc.