IBM cash register displays

From: Julian Richardson <JRichardson_at_softwright.co.uk>
Date: Thu Dec 7 06:26:23 2000

OK, somewhat off-topic (maybe) and slightly less than the ten year mark
(these things are dated '92) but anyway...

I've just been given a couple of IBM cash register displays, IBM part 4863.
They're dual height, 20-character dot-matrix displays. I was going to pull
them apart and just use the display units themselves, but as these things
have all sorts of built-in decoding logic in them I thought I'd ask here
first...

So, has anyone come across these before? I've found the pin connections for
the 4-pin connector which they use for comms from the host system (12V, GND,
2 serial I/O lines - I assume one per line on the display)

What I don't have is any information on the protocol that the host system
uses to talk to these things. IBM defined a 12-bit device protocol which
could be used for other devices, but I have no idea if that's what these
things use (actually, they may have a character generator on-board, in which
case they perhaps can't generate arbritary dot-patterns and so I'm better
off just keeping the display units anyway)

Long shot, I know, but I thought I'd ask here first... :)

cheers

Jules
Received on Thu Dec 07 2000 - 06:26:23 GMT