By envisionelec
Thu Dec 09, 2010 8:40 pm
I figured I'd start a new topic to keep all ideas merged into one thread. If this is like most forums, mods don't like multiple threads on the same basic topic.
A little background - I purchased an MPC2000 in 2009 to play with. Music isn't my profession, so my sincerest apologies to those that use this for a living! My MPC was in excellent condition, except the display was difficult to read for a newbie like me. The previous owner gave me a bunch of samples to make up for this issue, but I was still having trouble figuring out what I was looking at.
Fast forward a few months - I had researched the displays and found them to be...well, WEIRD. Thoroughly pissed off, I searched the forums for a suitable replacement. Nothing. Of course, you know this but I was new. Not to be deterred, I researched the possibility of re-manufacturing the displays. That didn't work out. I wasn't convinced that re-working an old, tired display was the best route. I moved on to other paying customers and sort of forgot about the project.
A couple months ago, I was winding down a big project and was looking to relax with my MPC. Still couldn't read it. Blast. I began to pick up where I'd left off last year and hit upon something big - I'd found a guy that is a reverse engineering geeenius. Yes, with a very long "E"; sometimes followed by cackling laughter [Muwahahaha]. I sent him to work while I researched the life out of the MPC display. Truth be told, I didn't want him to spend a lot of time figuring it out - he costs money. My time is (sorta) free. I wasn't getting very far until a few weeks ago that I uncovered the true identity of the displays. 100% confident. Not a shred of suspicion. This sort of thing doesn't happen every day!
The next step was to talk to the MPC display from an IDE. An IDE is an integrated development environment. It's basically a device that will emulate hardware used to communicate with peripherals. Provided that you have enough I/O and documentation, you can talk to anything digital. The real test was emulating the data produced in the MPC to drive the LCD, graphically. This would prove that we were on the right track to reproducing the display. On Dec 6th, 2010, we initialized and displayed our first data on the MPC display.
The continuation of this project will be documented in this thread.
A little background - I purchased an MPC2000 in 2009 to play with. Music isn't my profession, so my sincerest apologies to those that use this for a living! My MPC was in excellent condition, except the display was difficult to read for a newbie like me. The previous owner gave me a bunch of samples to make up for this issue, but I was still having trouble figuring out what I was looking at.
Fast forward a few months - I had researched the displays and found them to be...well, WEIRD. Thoroughly pissed off, I searched the forums for a suitable replacement. Nothing. Of course, you know this but I was new. Not to be deterred, I researched the possibility of re-manufacturing the displays. That didn't work out. I wasn't convinced that re-working an old, tired display was the best route. I moved on to other paying customers and sort of forgot about the project.
A couple months ago, I was winding down a big project and was looking to relax with my MPC. Still couldn't read it. Blast. I began to pick up where I'd left off last year and hit upon something big - I'd found a guy that is a reverse engineering geeenius. Yes, with a very long "E"; sometimes followed by cackling laughter [Muwahahaha]. I sent him to work while I researched the life out of the MPC display. Truth be told, I didn't want him to spend a lot of time figuring it out - he costs money. My time is (sorta) free. I wasn't getting very far until a few weeks ago that I uncovered the true identity of the displays. 100% confident. Not a shred of suspicion. This sort of thing doesn't happen every day!
The next step was to talk to the MPC display from an IDE. An IDE is an integrated development environment. It's basically a device that will emulate hardware used to communicate with peripherals. Provided that you have enough I/O and documentation, you can talk to anything digital. The real test was emulating the data produced in the MPC to drive the LCD, graphically. This would prove that we were on the right track to reproducing the display. On Dec 6th, 2010, we initialized and displayed our first data on the MPC display.
The continuation of this project will be documented in this thread.