How a Character LCD works Part 1
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend the series as an approachable demonstration of the simple standardized interface used by character LCDs.
What it is
The 8-Bit Guy explains how character LCD screens work and how to control them directly, first part of a series.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2018 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Nr7 · 2019-02 · on “Microcontroller LCD Initialization (2012)”
The 8-Bit Guy on Youtube made a great video series on character LCD screens and how to run them. In the first video he shows how to drive one manually using just switches: [this video] In parts 2 and 3 he shows two ways how to drive them with a C64: [LINK] [LINK]
Cites rwmj · 2018-09 · on “Designing a RISC-V CPU in VHDL: Arty S7 RPU SoC”
If you don't need actual HDMI and a regular monitor then there are other solutions which are more like what you describe: Firstly there are simple character LCDs which all have a standardized and simple electrical interface[1] for sending ASCII characters and control codes. Then there are bit-addressable colour displays that let you send drawing commands, eg: [2] [3] [4] [1] [this video] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] [LINK]
Cites loudthing · 2022-06 · on “The 8bit Keyboard”
Reminds me of the 8-bit guy's device he created for manually programming character lcd displays. [this video]