To finish off a retro PC running Batocera, I purchased a second hand Alutek case. There isn’t a lot of information about it online any more, but I did find this page from 2007. The case comes with an Imon VFD which I wanted to utilize but Batocera doesn’t come with LCDProc installed. I’ve not had much experience with Arch Linux, but thankfully the Batocera team have a very helpful page dedicated to recompiling it from source.
The source I compiled was from version 38 and after a trial run I had to upgrade the host to Ubuntu 22.04, after that upgrade the guide worked mostly flawlessly.
The stock ‘.config’ worked well and installed on the host PC fine. When I made modifications there was issues with drivers – the USB keyboard would be detected but couldn’t type, and the Nvidia card wouldn’t initialise correctly at all and I was left with a blank screen, because of these issues the modified version couldn’t be installed. I may reinvestigate this in the future but it takes about 2.5 days straight (best case scenario) to recompile the entire source (12 cores and 12GB RAM).
As a workaround, the package ‘lcdproc’ did compile correctly and the binaries were compatible with the stock version of Batocera 38.
After wasting a few days, due to a ridiculously dark semi-transparent face plate – which made it look like it wasn’t working from 2mtrs away. I eventually got the LCD to work reliably. These are the LCDd.conf settings:
[server]
Driver=imon
Hello=" Welcome to "
Hello=" Batocera"
GoodBye="Thanks for using"
GoodBye=" Batocera "
TitleSpeed=10
## Soundgraph/Ahanix/Silverstone/Uneed/Accent iMON driver #
[imon]
# select the device to use
Device=/dev/lcd0
# display dimensions
Size=16x2
# Character map to to map ISO-8859-1 to the displays character set.
# [default: none; legal: none, hd44780_euro, upd16314, hd44780_koi8_r,
# hd44780_cp1251, hd44780_8859_5 ] (upd16314, hd44780_koi8_r,
# hd44780_cp1251, hd44780_8859_5 are possible if compiled with additional
# charmaps)
CharMap=none
The compiled binaries can be downloaded here. All the available drivers and 3 client applications for the server daemon LCDd have been included, so if you choose to use it for your own build and your LCD is supported by lcdproc, it should work fine.
Unfortunately the ‘imon’ LCD module randomly develops a high pitch squealing noise which remains when the PC is turned off. This is due to the wiring harness being inline with the main ATX wiring loom. Fingers crossed it’s a dying capacitor and easy to replace. Failing that, its mounting holes are close enough to the same as a 20×4 character display LCD which can replace it.