So my JVF 2010-A power supply gave up on me, the panel would not power up and after testing it showed no voltage at the power supply output. It was at least 25 years old.Thing is, those genuine power supplies are hard to source and they cost a lot. Through reading the datasheet of the old power supply and online searching I was able to find a suitable replacement on e-bay! Here is the result and the work involved to fix your JVF 2010-A power supply if it should fail.
The opened panel after the power supply has been replaced
the major difference is with size of both power supplies
the old power supply sits on front with the new one installed already
the wires between the new power supply and the main switch must be lengthened, 18ga wire were used.
There is only 2 space for each 5V and Ground connection , the pannel sports 3 5v wires and 3 ground wires, you need to twist some together to make it work
height wise the new power supply occupies the same space, but the fastener location differ, in the end the panel closes corrrectly with this new one in place.
OK, so you bought a JVF 2010A panel for cheap, you don't know how to use it and you got here while searching how to!
The JVF 2010A is an 80s computer that execute a DOS program that is placed on a properly formatted Floppy disk, You simply place the floppy in the drive, power on the panel , it takes a time to boot and after this it displays the default animation continuously.That system allows you to display animations that you will create or copy onto the floppy disk. You will notice an AT keyboard port on the side of the panel. you can edit your drawings and scripts directly on the panel in the main program, it's doable but I don't encourage this because we can do everything we need on the PC where the content to display will come from...
first you need to create a floppy disk that will have the basic programs and files to run.
The following archive JVF 2010A formating tool was found at http://johniii.tripod.com/jvf.html
there is lots of info on this page on how to write scripts with special effects,this subject is of course more advanced than the basics.
Using the 2010a.exe application found in the archive you can create floppy disks that will be formatted correctly and it will have the needed files/programs for the panel to work.
You can now add new drawings and animation scripts to your floppy.
the main files types are as follows
*.DSN those are drawings, I would guess DSN comes from the french word 'dessin' since the company was based in QC,Canada... just a guess
all DSN files are kept in A:\DSN
*.SHW this is an animation file that contains commands that tells what to draw, what special effects to do and more.
all SHW files are kept in A:\
AUTOEXEC.BAT this is a batch file that gets executed when the system boots it contains the name of the animation file that will be ran when the panel is powered up.
AUTOEXEC.BAT is kept in A:\
(JVFA.exe or JVFF.exe) this is the program that does all the work.
How to add new content to the disk
In a prior blog post I was showing the DSNEditor windows application that I wrote. That application allows the user to convert .bmp files to .dsn and generate a basic animation script at the same time. Using this tool I generated the animation that is shown in the video.
Simply extract the content on the A: drive. It will place the needed dsn and shw files where they belong and it will overwrite the AUTOEXEC.BAT file
After this just place the floppy disk into your panel and power it up, after 10 to 15sec it should start to play the animation or display an error message if something went wrong.
Another blog post will explain how to use DSNEditor to generate your own content...
For some time I have had a JVF 2010A led panel, it is an old display panel from the 80s, its a device that loads a dos program and display animations. the software available to generate content is running in DOS or directly on the panel with an AT keyboard. I decided it would be nice to have a Windows App to build .dsn files (the images used in the animations). After some time working it became an app that batch convert .bmp files to .dsn files and create the .shw file( animation script) that will allow it to be run on the panel. Here is a sample video showing a simple animation built using this tool.
DsnEditor is a .Net application that is known to run on windows XP 32b, Windows7 64b, other systems have not been tested.
if you have an JVF 2010 panel with this tool you can :
Adjust the color treshold for a specific batch of files
You can use the 4 color levels available, 2/3 intensity level is hard to differentiate from full intensity, avoid to use it( set the same value for the 2 last threshold values)
preview the outcome of the conversion in a red level bmp files folder,
convert quickly a batch of input bmp files . and the shw that will play those .dsn files
If someone is interested we could build a repository to share .SHW and .DSN files between enthousiasts so that the public content available for the jvf 2010 is richer.
