In my endeavor to replace and upgrade my synths failing displays 
with more modern counterparts I decided to replace the 1×16 character LCD, EL backlight (and whining inverter) with a nice white OLED display.
I purchased the display through Comet, a european (Bulgarian to be precise) company. It is clamed the OLED display is HD44780 compatible, on which the original Sharp display is based.. and as most of the character LCD’s are. For reference, see the datasheet of the original Sharp LM16155 display, and the new Winstar OLED display. Here a sheet with additional data for the OLED controller.
I desoldered the flatcable connector from the original display and soldered it onto the OLED display. T
he contrast pin is unused, and the backlight pins are missing, but apart from this the new display is indeed pin compatible with the original one. But.. as you can see, only the first 8 characters are visible. After some reading and searching I learned about the various adressing modes these displays have.
It seems the original Sharp display is not addressed as a 1 line with 16 character, but as a 2 lines of 8 characters display, being the first line the first 8, and the bottom line the second eight characters. Line 1 starts at address 0h, line 2 at 40h. Below tables from the datasheets show the difference more clearly:
I was hoping the Winstar controller would be able to support this ‘older’ addressing mode, by setting a jumper.. or something.
I did find the display would accept a ‘number of lines displayed’ setting in the Function Set setup command. I made a small test-setup using an Arduino controlling the display, so I could experiment with different setup commands and addressing modes. Setting N to 0 or 1 did however not influence the addressing mode. All characters written from address 40h are not visible. No way will this OLED 1×16 display be a direct replacement for a legacy HD44780 based 1×16 LCD display, without altering the way the display is controlled.
The only way to do this is to hack hack the Juno’s firmware, which is not the road I wanted to go down. I do have some microcontroller assembly programming experience, but there was no source available of the Juno’s software, I never disassembled existing binaries like this, and also I did not own an eeprom programmer.
I did however find a binary available from a guy who performs firmware hacks on the JUNO and other synths. After fiddling around with 8051 (which is the Juno’s CPU) tools like dis51, d52 and the as31 assembler I was able to create an readable asm file, and assemble it back to a bin file which was the same as the original bin. This gave me confidence to give it a try.
I purchased a nice cheap Chinese EEPROM programmer (thanks to Dave’s excellent review on EEVblog), and a couple of EEPROM’s of ebay. The original EPROM is a 128kbit NEC D27128D. The EEPROM’s I purchased were Winbond W27E257, which are pin compatible with the NEC’s. Being EEPROM’s, they’re easy to reprogram, which I expected to be doing a lot in the process of testing changes made in the software. The Winbond’s have a capacity of 256kbit, which were the smallest I could find being pin-compatible and in DIP-28-pin package. The software then has to be uploaded in the upper 128kbit of the Winbond EEPROM, from 4000h, to be addressable for the Juno’s CPU.
I spend a lot of time finding the pieces of code where data was written to the display. Below is a subroutine which was easy to find, and also easy to alter. Setting address 0 (first character on first line) is writing 80h to the display, address 40h (first character, second line equivalent to 9th character on 1×16 display) is writing 0Ch. Cutout from the Winstar sheet:
In stead of jumping the 40h in addressing we only jump 8h.
writeLCD_16_chars_17BC: MOV A, #80h ACALL writeLCD_8chars_DPTR_17AD ACALL delay_3_R0to0_17A6 ; MOV A, #0C0h ; Go to second row of 8 characters MOV A, #88h ACALL writeLCD_8chars_DPTR_17AD ACALL delay_3_R0to0_17A6 RET
Unfortunately there are a LOT of pieces of code scattered all over the place which all write data to the display, and the jumps of 40h are not always very obvious. To make things even more complicated, there is some shifting going on: When pressing the ‘Write’ button the existing text is ‘shifted’ away and new text is written on addresses 88h and 0C8h respectively. Text will shift ‘home’ when the Write button is released, and original text will re-appear. To make this work with the new OLED addressing this shifting code had to be altered so it doesn’t shifts two lines by 8, but 1 by 16.
After a couple of nights of tinkering I’ve gotten all display output correct. I’m not going to bore you with more details, but feel free to drop me a line if you’re interested.. or wish to view my annotated assembly code. See attached to final .bin file. I can burn the EEPROM for you if you want.
In the the final step I desoldered the electronics from the PSU board used to power the EL backlight. No more whining, and the result is simply beautiful!
One remark: the output of dis51 won’t assemble straight away in as31, it requires some syntax fixup. I hacked dis51 so it does produce direct usable output, and made it include the pointer address in the labels it produces. I can share this if you want.
–UPDATE–
sorry for my late response, at popular request I’ve uploaded the binary and (annoted) assembly file:
The anoted Assembly file: http://www.visuanetics.nl/ju2-2_5-modified-b.asm
The binary, ready for programming: http://www.visuanetics.nl/ju2-2_5-modified-for-OLED-final.hex
Looks marvelous. Inspiring work! (You could probably do some business selling kits or doing mods…)
Hey, great work! I’d love to do this mod as well – possible to buy a programmed EEPROM from you and get a backup of the .bin file as well? If so email me dbalatero gmail com
Hi! No problem, I uploaded the the binary (.hex) file to the files section of the ‘Vintage synth MOD and repair’ facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/vintagesynthrepair/files/). I can send you a pre-burned EEPROM as well. Does EUR 40,- (coverage for postage, materials and other expenses) sound ok to you? My paypal address is: jeroen@cj2.nl
Let me know!
Hey, great mod! A couple of questions:
1) Is the flatcable the only thing that needs to be soldered for this?
2) Did you incorporate the removal of the all notes off MIDI message to your binary? I’d like to get rid of that too if I’m going with a custom firmware anyway.
Hi Jeroen,
just found out about your great “hack”. I recently replace my el-foil (making it readable again), but had your great work been known a little earlier, then i would have done it your way instead. Thumbs up 🙂
Very awesome job. I love when people figure out way to add new tech to old device. This is very well done and it is very cool that you are sharing the files and info for everyone else to try. It look so clean you would never think it’s wasn’t part of the synth in the first place. Kudos to you my very determined friend!
Hi, I’d love to get a pre burned EEPROM from you too please, can you do another one?
Cheers!
Hi,
1) yes the flatcable connector is the only item really necessary to get the OLED to work.. but I also desoldered the small transformer from the EL powerfeed circuitry (T1 on the JU-2 Power Supply Board) to stop whining.
2) I did not incorporate the all notes off functionality, as it was not really bothering me 🙂 But I could include it, based on Ricards work. It will take some time though..
hi there,
will this eeprom also work in an alpha juno-1?
Hi,
I like to change the display in the same way on my Juno-1. I think the firmware isn’t the same on these devices. Are you interested to do the same mod on a Juno-1 Firmware ? I can provide you a dump from mine. I think the display addressing should be very similar.
Hoi Jeroen,
Ik zou heel graag de benodigde eprom willen bestellen bij je. Wat gaat dat kosten?
Groet, Ernst
i’m sorry, never tested this but i don’t think so. Different firmware, and also different electronics on the keyboard/buttons side, due to not having velocity sensing.
Hi,
I did a lot of effort to get this working with my JU-1. I managed the EEprom readout, and the disassembly but i never get a really useable asm file with all the labels, compared to yours. Can you share your modded dis51 ? thanks
Hi Jeroen,
nice clean work here!
Could you please share your modded dis51 along with commented code?
Seen this as a great starting point in ju-2 exploration.
Keep up the good work!
Hey!
How did you manage to get a readable asm-file out of the bin? I tried to disassemble it with d52, but unfortunately there are no labels and names in it. I want to play around with the firmware as well 🙂
Hi Jeroen,
Would it be possible to get the annotated assembly code for the firmware? I’m interested in learning more about the Alpha Juno 2’s CPU behavior and that should be a big help.
Hi Jeroen. I absolutely love this Alpha Juno hack. It never occured to me that a Juno could be hacked!!! Even though I bought my AJ2 second-hand back in 1990, I still use it a lot. The display panel never lit up and it always whined. Because everything else worked OK, I assumed this was perfectly normal behaviour. However, after reading your article I tried unplugging the 90Vac backlight connector and my Juno stopped whining! Hooray!
I used to write z80 assembler back in the 1980s and having designed and built several MIDI controllers over the years (using PIC devices) I am very tempted to fix the display and do some additional mods to my Juno e.g. re-purpose the expression pedal.
I now need to get familiar with 8051 and associated programming tools. I already have eprom programmer and blank eproms but any advice you could give regarding assembly/disassembly would be highly appreciated. Your annotated assembly code would be a good starting point. Is it still available?
Hi, I’ve updated the page with links to both the binary and assembly file. Good luck!
Yes, I’ve updated the page with links to both the binary and assembly file. Good luck!
I put up a link to the code on the Juno2 page.. have to check if I still have the dis51 tools.
Hi again Jeroen. Many thanks for speedy page update and links to files.
Hi Joeren,
I did the same for the Alpha1.
If you are interested, i could share the file.
Hi Jeroen / Thomas – any chance you can also upload the modified Juno1 file?
Is there any way someone could do this to the rackmount version of the Alpha Juno: MKS-50? I had a go of it and it seems the firmware is a bit different from the Alpha 1 & 2. I could be wrong.
Hi, Thomas, can you send me the modified file for Juno-1, please? Thx a lot!
Hi guys, can you send me the modified Juno-1 firmware binary?
Just linking the JUNO1 firmware here: Great work guys!
http://r-massive.cellarseer.com/roland-alpha-juno-1-ju-1-custom-firmware/?fbclid=IwAR1bUGyroNSgAwyZDNSrpenVQIO9TH3kiX0D862RuiP8fxOyHQBg-nyuKe0
Hi Jeroen, thanks for this code! I’m having trouble uploading the code to the WINBOND chip using the TL866II+ programmer. Can you give any more detail about how to upload it to the correct section of the chip please? Thanks very much,