I don't know if anyone is interested, but auMatt and I have been doing a bit of work on the side to learn more about the BA ICC's and what we can do with them. Matt's the guru really. Over the last year and a bit I've been picking up faulty ICC's off eBay with a view to fixing and selling. But one thing has led to another and I've spent a bit of time doing other things with them.

As a teaser this is some of what we've done and what we're up to:

(1) I've found a supplier for the colour LCD panels that are a direct replacement for those in the ICC. Same size and fit. There is a slightly larger 7" screen that is otherwise pin and signal compatible, but I can't find a supplier for these anywhere. From time to time i can get 2nd hand panels, but new panels are available too. ASL is the only other place that you can get a screen, and they are not cheap. This supplier is not exactly cheap either, but it's an improvement. I've been able to revive 2 x ICC's that I bought for sub $100 with smashed screens so far.

(2) We may have found a way to get a Video Display out from the ICC using what appears to be an RGBSync output on the Colour Screen board. This might be useful for some people that want to use a slightly larger hi-res touch screen for their CarPC install, but still have a way to get the standard ICC video into the screen. Still to be tested.

(3) There's a 'Mainboard' in the CD Chassis that controls the whole shebang - and there are two main types of board. A non-programmable board, and a programmable board. The non-programmable board seems to be found on low series single-disc systems. But the programmable board seems to be found in anything with either a colour screen, six stack player, premium sound or dual zone. We're currently in the process of getting the tools necessary to test and see if we can reprogram these ourselves. And this means...there's a remote chance we could get the SY territory Clock into your DZ premium ICC for example.


Don't hold you breath just yet though, you'll have to sit tight and see how we go.


Lukeyson

Great to see your still around playing with BA ICCs etc. will be interesting to see just how much can be changed on the programmable ICCs

Also, auMatt believes that there might be a way to get the Sub line-level output even from the non programmable boards.

Watch this space....


Lukeyson

2 and 3 sound real interesting. Good work to both you Luke and Matt.

Hi Keep up the good work, it helps everyone and if interest rates ever go down I will re read every thing you have done and do about half. Cheers MD

great work the both of you, if anything goes wrong with my icc or any problems ill definately go to yous... random question is it easy to change the colour filter to like blue or something in the standard non-premo sound icc?

or is there even a way cuz ive seen a red one before lookd schmick!

cheers luke

It's not a colour filter, but LEDs you need to change.

As for easy, depends how easy soldering SMD LEDs is for you.

Nice work guys, also interested in this space

Hi Lukeyson if i were to change to a colour ICC from my monochrome unit what would you charge?

well soldering is easy, im a apprentice sparky so i know how to, just getting to the icc and ripping it all out n all that im a bit wery of, and yer dont wana fk the smart shield thing n all that

Hi Luke and Matt, a bit of a challenge, on a mono screen can you pick up the signals from the heater controls that turn on the different segments and use that signal to drive leds and part two of the challenge is can leds be put in the fascia above or below each button (or behind the button but color change) that way a lot of the radio section may be removable for the fitment of almost anything. Cheers MD

The buttons go into a 5 x 6 keyscan matrix chip (not all 30 are used on low series, but you go close on the DZ systems) - but that chip also drives the LCD segments. There's a 1/3 duty chip in Single Zone Mono Panels (which means all the individual LCD elements have 3 groups, and the 'groups' are alternately refreshed so many times per second), and a 1/4 duty cycle chip in the dual zone mono LCD panels. This keyscan/lcd driver chip is located on the LCD panel circuit board that the front button pcb plugs into.

The colour screens are different again, with chips for NTSC RGB screen generation, dual inputs, transparent and non-transparent overlays etc. A microcontroller replaces the keyscan and digital io fuinctions to the button pads and mainboard - and there's a serial eeprom on this board too. What it does yet we don't know. I suspect it may either be data for SZ or DZ buttons (the CD1-6 buttons are reverse ordered, for exmaple, on DZ compare to SZ systems), or it could store data for the On-Screen Display Controller - and if it does we may need to study this in more detail in order to add DZ ICC clock...

This keyscan/lcd chip also has digital IO serial bus that passes into the AMP module and down to the main controller board. The Radio Tuner sub-module and main microcontroller are both members of this small bus. The micro receives data about what button was pressed, and then passes control info back on what to display. The Radio Module provides info on what station has been tuned.

What you may be able to do is work out what pins on the LCD panel drive what segment, and then take those outputs for use to drive these 'leds' that you're after. Queue the appropriate electronics expert though to determine how to convert the LCD driver to LED driver. But replacing the key-scan function would be even harder.


Lukeyson

Hi Thanks for the answer, could be a challenge but individual address lines I might be able to work with but decoding a matrix is beyond me. Cheers MD

Lukeyson you still around?

I have an ICC with the colour screen and want to fit a monochrome screen due to the new position of the screen it has a poor viewing angle and appears dark and hard to read...

Do you think this is a simple swap of the screen, the LCD controller board, or something more?

If I could change the colours or something of the numbers from black to white that would work too... Just not sure what the best option is...

Cheers,
Tim

Drive with the parkers on. That changes the ICC to night mode colour scheme. See how that works for you. If it does there's probably an easy way to trick the ICC into believing the lights are always on.

Otherwise I think you're in trouble. none of the mono ICCs have the same features as the colour one, so if you were to change the screen (if it's reasonably possible), you'd loose functionality.