Next one in line to receive the much deserved LCD display upgrade is my Roland D70. As with most others I’ve previously overhauled, this synth has the ‘standard’ 240×64 dot-matrix graphics LCD black-on-green display with EL-foil, which ofcourse is failing after being 25+ years of age.

The new display is pin-compatible with the orignal display. Even the font select pin is already pulled up to Vdd, which mostly is not the case 🙂 The contrast control circuit provides large enough range for the new display. The flatcables may be resoldered to the new display.

Care must be taken to desolder the flatcable from the original display, as the metal wires break easily. I ended up having to cut and strip a a small piece of both flatcables.

As the new display is somewhat thicker, it will push the window rather far out when mounted in the original way. A solution is to mount the display ‘behind’ the mounts, see below picture. I added a few plastic washers to rise the mount off the PCB a little bit, else the LCD unit would be very close to the the larger PCB.

As the space between the LCD and PCB is still very tight, I covered the back of the LCD unit with electrical tape so nothing will short out if the boards touch each other.

Don’t forget to peel of the protective sheet!

et voila!