0. REALLY-QUICK START Try this, if you're in a hurry: edit Makefile.config (use your preferred text editor, of course) make su make install 1. GETTING STARTED First read the README if you haven't already. 2. CONNECTING THE DISPLAY TO YOUR SYSTEM WARNING! Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! This is pretty easy, but if by chance you screw up your machine by crossing some wires or by pouring water on things with the power turned on, don't blame us! Neither we, Matrix Orbital Corporation, or any manufacturer of LCDs you're trying to use shall be held responsible for damage incurred by following these directions. These instructions are SPECIFICALLY FOR MATRIX ORBITAL'S DISPLAYS! Other displays will quite obviously have different requirements! 2.1. POWER CONNECTION Matrix Orbital has instructions online for connecting the power cable. It's at http://www.matrix-orbital.com/addendum.htm Go there, if you're online. Or you can just read this: The LCD takes either +5V or +12V, depending on which model you bought. You should have the +5V model unless you requested otherwise. Either amount can be provided conveniently by a slightly modified floppy power cable. ************* For +5V, use the RED wire. ************** *********** For +12V, use the YELLOW wire. ************ Basically, disconnect the wire you don't need (yellow for +12V, or red for +5V) and one of the black wires (they're both grounds so it shouldn't matter which one you use). Then move the two remaining wires to the opposite ends of the connector. The power wire goes to the clearly marked +5V pin, and the black one goes to the also clearly marked GND pin. Assuming you modified the cable right (we'll have pictures on the web site in a few days to show how this connection should be made), plug the other end of your modified wire into your system's power cables and turn the system on (you don't need to connect the serial cable until you know you got the power working). The LCD should light up and tell you what version of the BIOS it has in it. If it does, you've got it. If it doesn't, uh-oh. Turn the machine off quickly and try it again. 2.2. SERIAL CONNECTION The LCD uses a standard DB9 serial connector. However you want to get from your motherboard or add-in card's serial port to the back of the LCD is up to you. In one of my machines, I just literally pulled one of the DB9 connectors off the back of my machine and plugged it straight into the LCD, so it was just running from the motherboard right to the LCD. YMMV (your milage may vary). In my new machine, I needed a longer cable, so I just went out and bought a 6' external serial cable, rolled it up and put it on top of my power supply, and everything worked. By default (at least mine was shipped this way ;) the LCD is configured to run at 19,200 baud, 8-N-1. You might want to make sure yours is set like this; otherwise you'll need to hack our code which you shouldn't have to do for this to work right. 3. BUILDING LCDPROC As long as you have a working gcc and make, this should work. - Edit Makefile.config to configure some options. - Run "make" LCDproc will build in (hopefully) a few seconds. It's not very big. If you want, you can install it (if you're root) by typing: make install This will install the binaries and the man page, and will make a link called /dev/lcd which points to whatever port you specified in the Makefile. It will also change the permissions on the specified port to allow all users to write to the port (so users can run LCDproc). If you _don't_ want to allow this, change the permissions back after installing LCDproc. :) 4. RUNNING LCDPROC / MANUAL INSTALL First, you'll need to run the LCDd server. If you're in the LCDproc source directory, and have just built it, run... server/LCDd -d joy -d MtxOrb This assumes you want to use the Matrix Orbital LCD driver and a joystick. You can find out what other drivers are available by running "LCDd -h". Note that you can use more than one driver at the same time. Then, you'll need some clients. LCDproc comes with one: clients/lcdproc/lcdproc C M T X & This will run the main LCDproc client, with the [C]pu, [M]emory, [T]ime, and [X]load screens. The ampersand (&) puts it in the background. To install manually, you'll want to do something like the following: su cp server/LCDd /usr/local/bin cp clients/lcdproc/lcdproc /usr/local/bin cp docs/lcdproc.1.gz /usr/local/man/cat1 ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/lcd Some prereleases or development releases will have broken auto-install scripts, so manual installs may be necessary for those versions. 5. PUTTING LCDPROC IN SYSTEM STARTUP It's nice to have LCDproc start when the computer boots, so here's how to do it: In Slackware or RedHat: Add lines to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local, such as the following: echo "Starting LCDproc..." /usr/local/bin/lcdproc C M X & In Debian: - Make a file "/etc/init.d/lcd" which works the same as the other scripts in that directory. (it should accept "start" and "stop" as parameters...) - To start, run "LCDd" with any necessary parameters. It will put itself in the background as a daemon. - Also in the "start" section, add "lcdproc" with some parameters. Be sure to put a "&" on the end, or the system will get stuck there when you boot. - And, put in any other clients you want to run all the time. - For the "stop" section, simply "kill" all the programs you started in the "start" section. They will shut down and exit. I recommend killing the server after all the clients, but it really doesn't matter much. - Now, add symlinks from /etc/rc[2-5].d/S50lcd to /etc/init.d/lcd, and be sure to get /etc/rc[06].d/K50lcd to /etc/init.d/lcd. This will cause LCDproc to shut down when your system does. That's all the OS`s we've actually done this with so far.. 6. OUR WEB SITE Visit http://lcdproc.omnipotent.net/ for the latest updates and news for LCDproc. If you've got comments, suggestions, bug fixes, or problems (related to LCDproc, not women ;), send e-mail to either William W. Ferrell (choadster@earthlink.net) or Scott Scriven (scriven@cs.colostate.edu).