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Programmable Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD)

Posted by timothy on from the dashboard-toy dept.

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!"

5 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Pr0n Meter by syntap · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. Odd.... by cybermace5 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    ...
  3. Price? by prockcore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why is it that these hardware review sites never give the price? You would think that the price would be at least as important as Baud Rate or some of the other things they listed.

  4. Re:So... um... why? by Zathrus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    About the only reason I can see to use one of these (at least, once you get out of the geek subset that's into case modding) is for a home theater PC. Having an HTPC that could display current input, current song/video playing with time elapsed, etc. would be nice. And most LCDs have a visibility measured in inches (centimeters) rather than feet (meters).

    Would probably want to be able to turn the brightness down though, since if it's too bright it's distracting in a darkened room.

    And, all of that said, this display is too large to be used for most HTPCs -- the display itself is about the right size, but requiring 2 5.25" drive bays kills it.

  5. Register lights! I want register lights! by dpbsmith · · Score: 5, Funny
    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.

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    "How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!