[rescue] LED Signboard

[Steve Hatle]

I picked up an LED signboard yesterday at a surplus place, cheap. It appears
to come from a company called Symon (www.symon.com), who makes
alerting/messaging software to drive displays, so you can have a sign
showing machine/network status, number of calls in queue for a call center,
etc. 

This sign has a DB25 serial interface (though they do make ethernet capable
ones) but there is no documentation on how to drive/program/control an
individual signboard.

Apparently their product "Symon2000" can control these, based on input from
other various pieces of software like OpenView, Tivoli, etc. There is also
supposed to be a piece of software called "Symon Says" that lets you program
a signboard directly.

Anyone have any experience with these? I suppose I can hook up a terminal/PC
and see what I can see out of the serial port, but if anyone knows how to
talk to one of these, it might be fun to rig up in the basement and drive
different messages/sayings through software.

Otherwise, in it's current default mode, it comes up with a scrolling
display of the time. If I plug it in at 12:01 a.m. some day, I'll at least
have a fancy $10.00 digital clock. <grin>

Same place had one of the ethernet driven, tri-color LED (green/amber/red)
large signs for $50.00, but I didn't want to take a shot on that until I
figured out how to talk to this one.  .  .