Any Electronics Experts? I want an LCD display for my PC

pealy

I have a PC which just plays music and never has a monitor plugged in, it would be nice to add an LCD display to show what it's up to. I have seen this:

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_2973.html

..for sale for £33 plus postage with a serial cable but wondered if it's cheaper to do-it-yourself? I have a soldering Iron and a cast iron determination and I spotted a few articles like this one:

http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/a_diy_lcd/

..which suggest it's fairly easy to make one with any HD44780 compatible LCD.

Am I more likely to break everything and end up wasting money or is it something an amateur could do?

Any links for good value LCD's ?? This one in the states is selling a 40x2 for 6 dollars! Anything like this in the UK?

http://www.bgmicro.com/prodinfo.asp?sid=025597222222222281144201214&prodid=LCD1025&page=1&cri=LCD1025&stype=3

irnbru_2

pealy wrote:

http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/a_diy_lcd/

..which suggest it's fairly easy to make one with any HD44780 compatible LCD.

Am I more likely to break everything and end up wasting money or is it something an amateur could do?

Looks straight forward.

Are there other pieces of software you can use to display on it?

Like an output plugin for an audio player?

pealy

irnbru wrote:

Looks straight forward.

Are there other pieces of software you can use to display on it?

Like an output plugin for an audio player?

There are lots of bits of software around (like LCDC) but I use my own software so need to be able to control it from VB.net

loftx

You can get the LCD only for around £4 + p&p on ebay if you don't want to pay for one with a serial interface. I don't know where you get the rest of the bits you need though.

pealy

loftx wrote:

You can get the LCD only for around £4 + p&p on ebay if you don't want to pay for one with a serial interface. I don't know where you get the rest of the bits you need though.

Thanks for the tip but I definitely need one 'with alll the bits' being a beginner.