Lately I purchased two of those LCD modules and thought it would be a nice idea for Linux to output some statistics like uptime and free memory on them. So I took the datasheet and started out hacking a little driver for them.
The project started out with How do I write a Linux driver?
So I took all the docs I could find and browsed through some examples and indeed got a working driver now ;) And now I can tell that you can only speak about the stability of Linux when you tried to support a new piece of hardware! Gee! Hardware is crazy! I really wonder how Linux could become such stable ;) All kinds of timings have to be regarded else only rubbish appears.
OK. But here we are now. The driver supports the more or less standard Hitachi LCD controller chip and a basic subset of it's features and commands.
Current driver version V0.152, is for kernels 2.0.* and 2.1.*, 2.2.*. It can be downloaded from
NEWS
I just received a new version from Klaus Rigbers who's friend Denis Noetel
added an interrupt driven part to drive up to 16 input switches. Those will
be ideal for controlling purposes. I will try to include these changes ASAP
and release V0.2 then. So hold on!
A big thank you goes to Michael Engel for helping me getting
started with the driver code! And of course to the whole Linux community for
this great operating system (consider writing a device driver for Windoze
;)
Besides this if you think about developing driver code I can only
recommend the Linux device driver book by Alexandro Rubini. Excellent
reference!
For those living in Germany and want to order such a LCD display you may want to have a look at