SP12 LCD REPLACEMENT AND INSTALLATION

as the backlight was growing dim on my sp12 (which i so dearly love) i was looking around foe sweet looking replacemts for it. crystalfontz.com is the spot. they have so many damn choicees. they use leds instead of the e.l. foils to do the backlights as well. so they really never burn oout. i kinda guessed at which would be the correct physical fit for the sp12, and only did the biopsy on it after ordering.. luckily it was a good guess. i went with the blue background and the white letters since it seemed very emu-ish and would fit.

the old lcd's have 14 pins. the new ones have 16 (15 and 16 are cathode and annode for backlight leds.) they also have a seperate spot to hook them up as well. i chose to jump mine from the incomming +5vdc from the main switch PCB. you have to put a 68ohm resistor from the jump off the +5 though, other wise it'll burn it out. the power accross the a and k then is about 2.23 on mine.. so its right in the tolerances for the leds. the other thing you have to do is install and wire a 10K ohm trimming pot for the display contrast. this goes to the power for the lcd (not backlight and not logic) its pin 3 in on the 16 pin set. so you jump the +5 to the leds and to the in on the 10k trim, then the ground gets jumped to the kathode of the leds and to the ground of the 10k trim also then the out of the trimmer get wired to the pin 3 location on the led pcb. its actually that easy.

the physical mounting was easy as well.. i re-used the 4 bolts that held the old lcd.. put the nuts on and tightend them in. then with a dremel tool and a littel rotary barrel grinder slowly ground the corners down on the lcd pcb. so it literally snugged right in and centered to the old position. then i put 4 washers on top of it (to overlap onto the PCB) then i found 4 more nuts to fit and sandwhiched the board between them and tighted it up. i also had to drill a hole thru the face plate for the 10K trimmer pot to be accessable onthe outside. i figured it should be right near the screen area. .. so its actaully quite easy to do and works fantastically. its a mid level project for someone who has a decent amount of experiance id say...