Custom viewfinder options (was: Need pinouts of FU-1000)

[Greg Boston]

<<<-- Originally posted by Jonathon Wilson : That's some good information, Greg! I'll have to look into this. It would be very handy to be able to flip a switch on my VF and have it rotate 180. I don't use the Tally switch on my VF anyway -- maybe some rewiring!

16:9 would be handy too... it does seem like it should be a fairly easy modification, Charles.

I hear you on the voltage... I used to work at a computer repair place, and whenver one of the techs was going anywhere near fixing the innards of a monitor, they used this special discharge stick to get rid of any stored charge. I saw one pop once... BLAM! Definitely something to be careful of... -->>>

16:9 would be accomplished by switching to a lower vertical deflection voltage on both polarities. this would give you the 'letterbox'. Again, as Charles stated, this only applies to CRTs. LCD's are a different animal.

As for the grounding stick, the pop sounds worse than it is. Those HV supplies for the CRT 2nd anode are very low current. Current is what kills you, not the voltage. In fact, most folks who get zapped by one do more damage to themselves when they jerk back and hit something or scrape their hand against something. Still, nothing to be taken lightly.

-gb-

[Rob Lohman]

Charles: I'm suprised your electronics guy can't find this out. Can
you guys open up the viewfinder? If so it shouldn't be too hard
to figure out where each wire goes and where it ends up in the
connector (you can test that with the approriate equipment).

[Charles Papert]

Yeah, we'll do it on the viewfinder end, I guess. The problem lies when input wires lead to a circuit board rather than the obvious spots (why we couldn't trace it through the Canon adaptor).

[Rob Lohman]

I can't imagine this device will have a complicated circuit board, so
if you look close (top & bottom!) you should be able to trace it.

If not, you can hook up a oscilloscope and see what kind of
signal is on each cable (it should be easy to find the sync lines
with this method).

If you have extra connectors (which you need for your project I
think) you can make a test extension cable and disconnect one
wire at a time, see what it does.