Clifton Griffin

I’ve been using a Crystalfontz 632 LCD display in my media center for well over a year, but everytime I set it up, I have issues.

Everytime this happens I go on a wild goose chase involving trying different baud rates, etc.  So, in case someone else is having the same issues, here are the steps I went through to get up and running again. (This was done on a Vista Ultimate 32 bit system)

1. Install the correct drivers! Crystalfontz’s website has two different driver packages. One is labeled “Executable v2154 driver installer ” which just dumps the drivers in C:\Program Files\Crystalfontz USB Drivers. The other is labeled “drivers v2176″.  You’ll notice that the latter has a higher version number. This led me to believe I should use this driver package. The only problem is it simply doesn’t work. You will get garbage each and everytime regardless of the connecting source.
2. Make Frontview (or whatever you use to control the LCD) has the same baud rating as your LCD’s hardwired setting. I changed mine to 19200 and set the LCD to the same (both dip switches in the up position)
3. That should be it! If you’re curious, my other settings are:
   Backlight: 95
   Contrast: 66

Hours of frustration ended…hopefully I’ll never run up against this again.