Need Help! Ultimax replacement graphics screen

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Thread: Ultimax replacement graphics screen

  1. #1
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    Question Ultimax replacement graphics screen

    The graphics crt screen has died on our Ultimax 2. We are currently using a 17" LCD PC monitor on a table next to the controller to view the graphics but we want to replace the screen properly with an LCD. Could anyone point me in the right direction as to where i could get the kit from to do this? We are in the UK .. Thanks.

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    What died? Sometimes it's just the backlight that goes out, you can find the tube replacements on line. Hurco is ~ 1200 I think for a monitor. I replaced one 2 weeks ago.



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    The screen lines were waving about the screen like it was haunted. It then just gave up about three month later.
    What do you mean by ~ 1200?



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    I have found a company that delivers an LCD replacement kit that's just a straight swap. £550+ Delivery.
    Thanks for the advice underthetire.
    I got confused about the ~1200 but reading again i see you meant the price of a replacement from Hurco.



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    I've had no end of trouble with my monitors. Mine's an ultimax 3 with colour screens, I've had both screens repaired (alledgedly) about three years ago. But now one has gone completely and the other takes abouut 30 minutes to warm up and keeps moving about, no proper focus either.

    I pluged the pc monitor into the VGA pinouts on one of the boards just to test it out, worked fine. I found a company that sells small LCD's that people fit in cars but they run off 12 volts, however there is a 12 volt supply under the keypad. I rang them on friday but they were out of stock of the non touch screen type so they were getting some more in next week. I'll try them again this friday.

    My plan is to just cut out the VGA pinout from the boards of each monitor and then use a short pc monitor cable to plug into the new LCD's VGA input, connect to 12 volt supply and it should work. I think I'll have to make a new front panel to hold them in place but that's not a problem. I'm going to be doing this in the next couple of weeks so if you want I can let you know how things go. I also don't mind giving you any drawings I make for the front panel etc.

    Check this out:

    Car Computer - Lilliput FA1042-NP/C - 10" VGA monitor (non-touch scree



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    How did you get on with your upgrade?
    We have just left ours as it is but mounted the monitor above the controller.



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    Pretty good. It turned out to be a really good job. The hardest bit was cutting off the old 10 way IDC connector and soldering on a new 15 way VGA. The cable is made up of 5 strands but there is an inner wire and an outer sheath to each strand. They are very thin wires and easy to break. The pin outs on the PCB are numbered so I marked the wire for number one with a felt tip pen and then did a sketch on paper of the old connector and the new VGA connector that I bought from Maplins. This was so i could get the wires soldered onto the correct pins.

    The old IDC connector just comes apart so it's easy to bare the wire ends. It's a tricky old job and i had to do one of the connectors again becasue there was no signal to the graphics screen, a wire wasn't soldered properly. The monitors just fit straight in the holes and I made a couple of brackets to hold them in from behind. Works a treat now. I hope the photos come through ok.

    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Ultimax replacement graphics screen-dscf0141-jpg   Ultimax replacement graphics screen-dscf0137-jpg  


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    Top job mate.



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    Steve, Could you share some information on how/what wires / numbers you connected when you went from 10 to 15 connections ?

    Thanks, I am electronically challenged
    Rich

    Nice work on that !



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    Steve, I too could do woth a bit more info please. We have two KM3P's, both need this "upgrade". We have purchased two of the LCD screens from your link which arrived this morning. Any further info will be a great help and much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

    Dave



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    Ok Guys, I'll do my best to help.

    Firstly if you're not confident to do the soldering, and haven't got a friend who is then a specialist cable company could help. You need a short adaptor VGA cable to go from 10 way female IDC to a 15 way Male D-SUB.

    The 10-way cable pins are as follows:
    1 red video
    2 red video ground
    3 green video
    4 green video ground
    5 blue video
    6 blue video ground
    7 horizontal sync
    8 horizontal sync ground
    9 vertical sync
    10 vertical sync ground

    Check these guys out Dave.

    Cablecom UK LTD
    Connector Specialists & Cable Assembly Manufacturer - Cablecom (UK) Ltd
    01695 556251

    I should imagine there is someone similar in the USA Rich, I just found these guys through the net.

    As best as I can remember back 5 months this is how I did it.

    The video ribbon cable is all one colour and is made up of 5 strands of wire with an inner and outer to each strand. The side of the wire that is number 1 can be identified by looking on the back of the board where the connector is soldered on. There should be a number 1. I put a felt tip mark on the corresponding side of the ribbon, you can see it in one of the photos. It's very important that you get the cable numbered correctly for obvious reasons. The IDC connector can be undone but it may break in the process, mine did, but it makes baring the ends of the wires easier.

    All the inner cores are odd numbers, 1 3 5 7 9. And the outers (grounds) are even numbers, 2 4 6 8 10.

    I got 15 pin D-SUB connectors from Maplins and metal cable sheaths because they are better than the plastic ones. If you look closely at the back of the D-SUB where the wires are soldered on you can see the pins are numbered 1 to 15. I've attached a quick DXF to show this. Once you have indentified which one of the cable strands is number 1 then you can begin soldering. I used one of those little helping hand crocodile clip things to hold it all and a small soldering iron so it doesn't melt everything.

    So working from the video cable onto the D-SUB, core wire 1 goes onto pin number 1. Core wire 3 to pin number 2. Core wire 5 to pin number 3. Core wire 7 to pin number 13, and core wire 9 to pin number 14.

    I twisted all the ground wires together and soldered them onto pin number 10 and then used two small pieces of wire to connect pins 5 and 6 to the ground wires. You'll see this in the photos. Be very carefull not to break any wires or get them crossed, it's so easy to do because they're so small.

    I managed to sort the correct wire positions by using a multimeter on the PCB connectors to see which pins correspond form one connector to the other and doing a quick sketch of what they were, similar to the DXF. It was really just a case of copying the Female D-SUB that's on the board but making it male instead. I also needed to cut a little piece out of the front panel for the VGA connector to fit in the screen underneath.

    This is about as much as I can give so I really hope it works ok. It's a very tricky job that once you start you have to finish but the result's worth it in the end. Post back on here and let me know how you get on.

    Best of luck,

    Steve.

    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Ultimax replacement graphics screen-dscf0159-jpg   Ultimax replacement graphics screen-dscf0163-jpg   Ultimax replacement graphics screen-dscf0164-jpg   Ultimax replacement graphics screen-dscf0165-jpg  

    Ultimax replacement graphics screen-dscf0166-jpg   Ultimax replacement graphics screen-dscf0167-jpg  
    Attached Files Attached Files


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    Something needs a clarification before this thread goes any further.

    Talent, is your ultimax 2 actually the upgraded max 32 dsp or whatever it's called? Looks like the max 2 but has more like max 3 internals?

    Reason I ask is ultimax 2 video is NOT vga compatible at the signal level like the ultimax 3. It's an old TTL video output and is completely different to cga/ega/vga.

    I spent many hours trying to interface it to vga with various (cheap and very expensive) video converters, and was almost successful, but could not get it working perfectly due the unusual hsync timing on the ttl video source. It might be achievable with custom circuitry to alter the hsync timing but the time periods that required altering were so small that I could not do it easily and didn't have the time to persevere.

    So, long story short, I am thinking that daveh666, assuming his km3p's are original max 2's, has just bought two replacement screens that cannot be fitted to his machines on the basis of slightly inaccurate statements in this thread...

    Also worth noting is that nobody makes drop in replacement lcd screens for the ultimax 2 like they do for just about every other control out there, and this is the reason why!



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    Yes that does need to be clarified and after reading gthlm's post it's very important.

    In Talenttoolroom's first post he said he had an Ultimax 2 but that he plugged a PC monitor into it. Well that can only be done if it has the VGA pinouts on the board. This is what made me think they are the same. I did say in my response that mine was the Ultimax 3 control with colour screens.

    I hope Daveh666 comes back on here and that everything's ok. I also hope that anybody who reads this thread actually reads the whole thing. If it turns out to be slightly missleading then I'll want it removed. All I was trying to do is help by showing what I'd done to fix my machine.



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    Steve, Firstly thankyou very much for providing the further info on your mod, it was very much appreciated.
    Secondly, sadly, it looks like we are unable to do the mod ourselves for all the reasons gthlm describes. However, we also have a BMC30 with Ultimax 3 on board. We've already forked out over £1k for ONE replacement screen form Hurco, next time we require one, we will use the LCD's purchased for the KM3P mods...if not I'm sure my son will hook them up to his Playstation in his car!!
    Not your fault in the slightest Steve, not in my book anyway. What you did worked for you and will work for others. Hopefully this thread will help others in the future too.
    Thanks again mate,
    Regards
    Dave



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    The left-hand text screen on Ultimax II is monochrome CGA video. The right-hand graphic screen is monochrome EGA video. I have a very old multiscanning 14" CRT display, digital input monitor (NEC JC1401P3A, I think) and it can display either of these signals. I looked for an LCD replacement for Ultimax II once - I gave up and fixed the 2 monitors.



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    Arrow Lets step back a bit farther and look at the whole problem.

    As Fasto said the left text screen is Mono CGA and the graphic screen is mono EGA.

    I seem to recall that the display data is sent from the card rack as a serial stream to the display cards in the console. It might be possible to intercept this signal and run it into a propellor board (think Arduino) and have it process the signal into a std VGA output.

    I have a Max32 updated card rack feeding a stock MAX II console - While my uncle has a MAX II KM3 with both screens out. Some day soon I will be feeling this pain.



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    Quote Originally Posted by skullworks View Post
    As Fasto said the left text screen is Mono CGA and the graphic screen is mono EGA.
    The text screen is not "standard" mono CGA if such a thing exists. The timings and resolution are all proper but the h-sync pattern seems to be different enough to cause horizontal raster problems that could not be adjusted out on all the signal converters I tried. To be specific, the image was there and clear, but only half of it and starting in the middle of the screen. I had almost identical results with several different cga converters, from cheap arcade game converters from ebay to expensive industrial converters designed for this kind of thing. The h-sync needs some conditioning before the converter before this will ever work from what I can see, but I couldn't justify the time I was spending on it and gave up.

    I'd be really interested if anyone has any ideas how to make this work though. Link to my original thread on the subject.

    The graphics screen is a piece of cake and works perfectly with even the cheap arcade converters.

    I'm pretty sure that the serial link between the cpu and the crt controller is bidirectional and not a stream, and contains more than display data.



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    The graphics screen is directly drivern at EGA frequencies from a little daughterboard on the main Intel CPU card. This is the daughterboard with the big, white NEC chip on it and the multicolor ribbon cable going to it.
    The text CRT is driven from an 8085-based board in the console, which talks to the Intel CPU card via serial. So, it's half and half - text generated in the console, graphics generated on the Multibus CPU.
    Gregor, the description you've given sounds like the sync was the wrong polarity for the converter. It's also possible that the sync frequencies here in the US are different from the UK; I very carefully measured 15.something for hsync with my digital oscilloscope.
    Regardless, the little CRT driver boards are dirt-simple and super easy to fix, so I kept the CRT's.



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    Quote Originally Posted by fasto View Post
    Gregor, the description you've given sounds like the sync was the wrong polarity for the converter
    Yes, in retrospect I think that is very likely. The expensive converter was supposed to auto-detect sync polarity and as such no option in the top level settings. There is almost certainly a bit in the device's DAC parameters but those are undocumented and the manufacturer was unresponsive to my requests for a proper parameter list.

    I am going to revisit this soon since I now have two max 2 machines in my shop. I will look at inverting the h-sync in front of the converter and see where it gets me.



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    Quote Originally Posted by stevieboy View Post
    You need a short adaptor VGA cable to go from 10 way female IDC to a 15 way Male D-SUB.
    Stevieboy, I have a question if this cable will not do the job?
    10ft SVGA/VGA Male-Female Extension Monitor/Video/LCD Cable/Cord$SHdisc{4xShield

    Is it possible to buy a monitor which fit connector without modification? except from HURCO ?

    Can you take a look at my attached files and tell me if I have to make a modification if I want to connect the same monitor?

    I have Hurco BMC 30th/M Ultimax 3



    Thanks Guys

    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Ultimax replacement graphics screen-image1-jpg   Ultimax replacement graphics screen-image2-jpg  
    Last edited by J.B.D.; 08-23-2012 at 01:16 PM.


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