Mystery of Chinese Nokia 6100 LCD

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

Hi,

I've read a lot about Nokia 6100 LCD on forums but they won't solve my problem. So I made a new topic to get some help please.

My Nokica LCDs arrived from China (I bought some 4 for various projects, but I've now only 2, as two of them burnt).

It is not known to me if the controller is PCF8833, or Epson S1D15G1, but this is what could be tested by running both of codes to see what works. My problem is yet harder :frowning:

The pinout as I found on various sources are all this sort:

I first connected pins based on this. Just as I connected the +6.5v to Back Light LED (BL), the LCD burned out! :cry:

I suspected the pinout. Got another LCD and used a loupe to see if I could find anything and well, there were numbering of pinout printed, and to my strange they were different from what on all documentation I found (and on link of Sparkfun on this LCD):

Next I supposed that the right pinout is what is printed on the board and connected the circuit based on Chinese pinout. The strange thing is that, connecting +6.5 to BL, changes nothing, both when putting the circuit working or having non of pins other than (vcc and gnd of) BL connected.

Now when I connect PIN1 to vcc 3.3v and PIN2 which must be RESET, to GND, the LCD turns on in pale blue. If at this time I connect the BL to anything from 3.3 to 6.5 nothing changes! Also nothing other than pale blue comes up at all.

Now if, say, Chinese printed wrong and pinout is the same, or say, they both printed pinout differently, and set up wiring differently as it is a copy LCD, then PIN 1 and 2 which I considered VCC and RESET are actually BL + and -, but well, connecting them to 6.5v, burns out the LCD! At the same time, connecting power to pin 9 and 10 if we suppose they are real BL + and - won't change anything!

How can I figure out the pinout then? (considering I have only 2 more LCDs, so not burning more!).

Please give ideas!

2

If you see blue color on your LCD then backlight is working. To see anything meaningful you need to initialize the module and send it some data.

Some displays have internal booster to provide LED voltage while others generate 3.3V internally from LED voltage.

3

So LCD is alive!

I think this copy is somehow different from original Nokia 6100. My problem now is that, wiring it by the way of each possible controllers (Philips and Epson) gives no results.

The only thing happens is that, when I wire for Epson controller and run the tutorial code, the pale blue starts to blink very fast (but not complete blinks) as if something happening, but still nothing I could get!

Any ideas please? :frowning:

4

Further experiments gave more interesting result and I can summary all here:

On Chinese LCD, pinout is backward numbered, i.e. pin 1 is 10, 2 is 9, etc. but this is only numbering!

Connecting the 10th pin to VCC for BL and 9th go GND gives no result, which must give, as according to documentations all around about this LCD online, they are VCC and GND of BL. At the same time, connecting 1st pin (the VCC of logic on documentations) and 2nd (must be RESET), turns the back light on, that is behaves as if "only the numbering is backward written but the functions are based on original documentations".

To prove this idea, I connected pins as written in documentations and run codes of all existing tutorials. Nothing works! :frowning:

  1. if this pinout is nonstandard, well, then how Chinese are claiming that this LCD is to repair Nokia 6100, 6610, etc. LCDs? Could we beleive that "all" Chinese sellers on Ebay are giving wrong info? No, in my opinion. Then why the LCD didn't work with any tutorial I've tried in some 3 days?

  2. if the LCD is to work as the original Nokia, why then 3.3v turns back light on, and going to 5v make it more pale instead of making it lighter? This tells us about the voltage booster? Who knows please?

  3. could anybody help me advance out of this problem point please?