dionb wrote on 2025-12-20, 14:37:I've been lucky enough to get my hands on a nice industrial PC based on an ISA backplane with Pentium 133 on an SBC in it, and a […]
Show full quote
I've been lucky enough to get my hands on a nice industrial PC based on an ISA backplane with Pentium 133 on an SBC in it, and an (DSTN?) LCD screen bolted on.
It all seems to be in perfect working order with nothing worse than a depleted Dallas DS12887 soldered onto the SBC to fix. Great! Only thing is, I don't actually need a P133 system. I'd far prefer to use this backplane for older stuff - and it would be nice to be able to use the LCD panel then, regardless of what SBC I'm using. So I'd like to find an ISA card with the same interface on it. Problem is, I'm pulling blanks trying to figure out what the exact interface is.
The SBC is a J&J Technology JJ.110VN, for which there's very little documentation to be found. But it's functionally identical to the Protech PC-560 G4, whose manual is on TheRetroWeb. Only problem is that it's not exactly explicit either:
LCD Panel Connector
The connector LCD is a 41-pin, dual-in-line header used for Flat Panel displays.
Great, I could have guessed that much myself.
Fortunately it does give the pinout:
PIN ASSIGNMENT PIN ASSIGNMENT
1 P20 2 GND
3 P16 4 VCC
5 P21 6 P0
7 P17 8 P8
9 P22 10 P1
11 P18 12 P9
13 P23 14 P2
15 P19 16 P10
[…]
Show full quote
PIN ASSIGNMENT PIN ASSIGNMENT
1 P20 2 GND
3 P16 4 VCC
5 P21 6 P0
7 P17 8 P8
9 P22 10 P1
11 P18 12 P9
13 P23 14 P2
15 P19 16 P10
17 VCC 18 P3
19 FLM 20 P11
21 MDE 22 P4
23 LP 24 P12
25 SHFCLK 26 P5
27 3.3V 28 P13
29 3.3V 30 P6
31 ENABKL 32 P14
33 LCDVDD 34 P7
35 ENVEE 36 P15
37 GND 38 +12V
39 GND 40 +12V
41 NC
The SBC has a C&T 65548 VGA controller on it.
Anybody know what this interface is called? And/or any ISA cards that might also have it?
Could you share a picture of the cable and how it hooks into the LCD? Is it definitely a DSTN panel?
The pictures online for that SBC are abysmal - but I did find some that are decent res based on the chip layout and board name.
The attachment protech-560-g4.jpg is no longer available
Looks like Protech is the manufacturer and there are other 486 SBCs with the same connector that have C&T graphics: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/protech-pc-410 and https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/protech-pc-430
Internet archive for the 560 is pretty useless: https://web.archive.org/web/19980524093518/ht … .tw/ipc560.html
Those do seem to share the same pinout on the connector - which is a DF9-41. DF9 being the series and 41 denoting that it's the 41 pin type, there are also 31pin and 51pin etc. The one on the board is the male connector however that pinout seems to be entirely specific to Protech which I think would've hooked up to a separate PCB at the LCD end that would break out the inverter power from the cable, then a cable to the LCD.
The giveaway is that it's putting 12 volts through there which no LCD would ever handle directly.
The pin definitions for P1 to P23 change depending on what type of display the C&T graphics chip is driving, then the other pins are LCD control signals, clock and power. That's detailed extensively in the datasheet for the graphics chip itself. Switching display modes can be done with a software utility as a hacky thing but really it requires reflashing the BIOS to switch between DSTN, TFT modes etc.
The Taiwanese SBC manufacturers each just kind of made their own breakout standards for the C&T graphics chip so there's no real standard to follow.
Advantech had their own completely different ones varied between models with some having 44 pins for LCD + Inverter power (PCM-4825), other ones that keep the LCD signals and inverter power separate (PCA-6145). I've used both of those by either making a custom PCB or getting a DF9-31 cable and hand wiring it to the 40-pin connector on the SBC.
If you want to use the display with an ISA card, you'd need to find a Chips and Technology card since those seem to be the only ones from that era that drive LCD panels. Then you'd need to find out the pinout on that card and wire up all the signals by hand.
