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reading LCD data and transmiting to a pc

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NeX

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sorry if this is the wrong section, i am not sure first of all how to do what i am trying to do, but i think a micro controller might be the way.

i have a device, it has an LCD, the LCD has various signals, a clock, two basic data channels and then a pulse for vertical and horizontal sync,

every time the clock is pulled high, the data from the two channels is read, if both are high it is a black pixel and if both are low then it is a clear pixel and the inbetween are different shades. then when the horizontal line is pulled high it starts a new line and when the vertical line is pulled high it starts from the top

a very basic LCD with no color or AC data just simple 0 or 5v square wave form.

so i want to capture the LCD data at its clock speed of about 5mhz, and feed it into a computer so i can have what is on the LCD also mirrored on the screen

i tried using my parallel port as a data analyser but the operating system just wont give it enough CPU time to read the data fast enough.

so what i need is something that either does the reading itself outside the computer and then buffers it for when the computer is ready, or something that can convert the data and compress it so it can be sent to the computer as a packet.

i really don't know how to do this, it seems simple and logical as there are many things like USB mice that take data and feed it to the computer, but nothing seems to be fast enough to keep up with the LCD.

i need a cheap solution for mass production possibly, but does anyone have any ideas? i am not so sure on what technology is avalible that might do this.

thanks all
 
You're really doing this the wrong way - wh8ch may be perhaps the only way to access it?.

Can't you access the actual data, rather than the display signals?.

I would imagine it's going to be quite difficult to do it from the display, and not a cheap or simple job.
 
You're really doing this the wrong way - wh8ch may be perhaps the only way to access it?.

Can't you access the actual data, rather than the display signals?.

I would imagine it's going to be quite difficult to do it from the display, and not a cheap or simple job.

thanks for the reply.

you are probably right, i am not sure how to get the infomation directly. there is a single 64k graphics buffer chip, but i have no idea what it puts out, or what format it is in etc, to do that i would have to get myself a data analyser anyway, which already makes this project expensive, and i was hoping to have as little hardware as possible, in theory the computer is able to understand the data without any extra hardware, but if i read straight from the graphics buffer i assume that i would need something to convert the data into something the computer can understand.
 
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