Here is a comprehensive document of all the JVF 2010-A info johniii at tripod could find online (but I can't find HIM!). He used all the sources that he could find (im sure many of you have found them as well by searching on JVF2010-A) and he tried to sum them up so Most of the credit goes to them. I have updated this page with things that I have found and made the documentation a bit more complete. This page just trys to simplify getting familiar with the sign and starting it up.

First you need :

JVF 2010-A Sign (should have a floppy drive on the left side)

Windows PC

Floppy Drive (and you thought they were outdated)

Old ps1 keyboard (it has the Large Connector on the cable)

Click here to get 2010A.zip
This file contains an exe that will create a bootable floppy on your A drive. That floppy will contain the JVFF.EXE program that you can run in a command prompt under windows to emulate the sign (and work on shows and graphics)

The keyboard is absolutely necessary if you want to be able to edit your sign without a computer.

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The 2010-A is a 128 x 48 "pixel" led display that runs a "slide show" program consisting of individual slide files. Apparently, there is an earlier version called simply the 2010 that connects to a computer with a 25-pin cable (that I assume is an old fashion Serial Com Port interface), but as I have not been introduced to one of these, I can't comment any more on it.

The 2010-A displays these slides in a basic IBM CGA compatible structure where 1 byte (8 bits) = 4 pixels with these possible values:

00 Black (LED OFF)

01 Cyan (LED 1/3 ON, also called "half intensity")

10 Magenta (LED 2/3 ON)

11 White (LED FULL intensity or "bright")

(Magenta value is not visibly that much different than White, so is rarely used)

The general hardware structure of the 2010-A is (again, speculation) based on an IBM XT compatible motherboard with a floppy drive controller and BIOS set for booting from this floppy. It (based on my own experiment with DOS MEM) has 2MB of RAM. The unit I work with also has a 5-pin DIN connector which I'm guessing is either a keyboard jack or a modified serial connector, but who cares? The actual drive circuits for the led's are unknown to me, but a fellow curiosity seeker speculates that there is a programmable DMA that scans a chunk of ram to raster to the led matrix. For me, as long as the software works, who cares?

When power is applied and a short delay expires, the 2010-A attempts a normal boot load from the floppy. This results in DOS (yes, that is correct - DOS Ver 5.0 or 6.22) being loaded. The CONFIG.SYS file then loads HIMEM.SYS (which allows access to the entire 2MB of ram) followed by RAMDRIVE.SYS (which creates a "fake" Hard Drive C: in memory of about 800KB). The AUTOEXEC.BAT file then proceeds to copy the display program, the display program "control" batch file (.SHW) and the various "slides" (.DSN and .BLK) to this ramdrive. Control then switches to the ramdrive and the display program and the show begins. The disk can be removed and the show can run as long as power remains present.

Source: talon

NEVER just double click jvff.exe, If you do the odds are that your computer will restart and try to boot as if it was the sign. Then to make matters worse it will sometimes overwrite your autoexec.bat and config.sys files in your c:\ directory. Not good. Not good at all. Also they think the ramdrive file is messed so they took that part out of the autoexec.bat file.

The trick is to launch a command window, and run JVFF.EXE in that window. also, do NOT have an autoexec.bat file in the same directory as JVFF.EXE

So I don’t think the files are loading to the virtual c: drive but it doesn’t matter cause after the show plays once through all the data is in the ram anyways. This may be a problem if you start creating very large shows but I have yet to have a problem with shows consisting of 40 .DSN files

Start Up

Download 2010a.zip:

Now then. To get started extract the 2010a.zip file to a new directory on your desktop. (directory is just a folder also called dir for short.)

Put a floppy disk in you computer and run 2010a.exe

Put into Sign and turn the sign on and wait 30 sec or so.

It should have loaded up a circle that appears to spin in a choppy fashion on it's first rotation but then, after loading, should run smoothly.

The 3 main files types we will deal with:

.DSN Files are the image/graphic files

.BLK Files are the "animate-able" graphic files (I’ll get into this more)

.SHW Files are the script files

.DSN- These are 128x48 bitmap consisting of 4 different possible colors

0 = black

1 = 1/3 power/intensity

2 = 2/3 power/intensity

3 = full power

We can create these on our computer using UTILITY.EXE to import 16 color .BMP files or on the sign

.BLK - These are arbitrary sized bitmaps consisting of 4 different possible colors

0 = black

1 = 1/3 power/intensity

2 = 2/3 power/intensity

3 = full power

The instructions for creating these is below.

.SHW – The main script or Program. This is loaded at boot up and is editable on the pc or sign alike.

Color 2/3 power isn’t visibly different then full power so it is useless. Which makes it basically a 3 color sign. Black, light red, dark red. But you’ll be surprised how much the light red helps make your dsn files more detailed.

Always put your .DSN files into the /DSN dir and the same for your .BLK files. But the show files stay in the A:\ directory.

Example of locations

A:\dsn\example.dsn

A:\blk\example.blk

A:\example.shw

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Create a new bitmap image in MS Paint.

Change attributes to 128 wide x 48 tall

Make it all black

Draw with any tool

1 pixel in paint = 1 LED (A LED is 1 "light bulb" on the sign the sign has 6144 LEDs)

Use color black to draw off dot

Use color white to draw full power dot

Use color light red to draw 1/3 power dot

Save as….

Enter short file name. not more then like 8 letters

And change save as type to 16 color bitmap

Save in the same directory as the utility.exe

Open utility.exe and press option 4

Enter the filename and the extension

Example: Pic1.bmp

You'll see a preview of it then it will create a file with the same name as the bmp file but will now have the .DSN extension.

Drag this dsn file into the a:\DSN folder

Your image is now ready to be put in a show

A .BLK file is a graphic file that is usually smaller than a .DSN file that can be moved around on the screen with the MOVE show command.

The BEST way that I have found to do this is to first create a .DSN file that contains the graphic that you want as a portion of that image.

After the .DSN file has been created and placed in the /DSN directory:
Open a COMMAND prompt under windows and run the JVFF.EXE program (that you can download from this page)
In the JVFF.EXE program select menu item 2 for Edit Drawing
Then Select 1 for Edit Drawing.
Enter the name of the file without the .DSN extension and hit return (your .DSN file will show up onscreen)
Move the cursor to the Upper Left of the part you want as your .BLK file.
Hit F9 (for Block mode - See the programming page for more block commands) then hit Enter to select the current point as one of the corners of the rectangle.
Move the cursor to the Lower Right corner of the graphics you want in your .BLK file and hit Enter a second time to create the rectangle.
Now hit F7 to save the selected portion of the screen as a .BLK file.
Enter the filename you want it saved as (8 chars or less), and hit enter.
Hit ESCape enough times to exit.
You have created the .BLK file. Now use the "MOVE" command in a show to view the .BLK in action.

The 2010a runs the JVFF.EXE program AS it's operating system. This is accessible if you have a keyboard. Plug in a keyboard and press Escape (ESC) ONE TIME and wait 2-10 seconds. If you press esc when at the main screen it basically unloads jvff.exe and you’ll need to turn off the sign then back on, very annoying. To create a .DSN on the sign go to edit image then type a short name and it will say new file. Draw something then press esc. It’ll ask you to return save or quit. If you press quit it wont save the file. The sign is not y2k compliant so set the year to 1985 or something, cause I dunno what will happen if the clock tries to go to 2000. maybe the bios will Write and error to itself and break the sign? Only the years 1980 to 1999 work.

You can also edit your shw files from the os.
Note: There are also two earlier version called JVFA.EXE and JVFAFIB.EXE (JVFAFIB appears to allow .FIB files which might be the same as what the zbk files turned into - and neither one runs well in a dos box on my PC so I will never know for sure.) and there are two companies that have custom versions. One is G2SYS.EXE which is from G2Systems, and it runs a proprietary version of the SHW files that you can't edit. They do this to TRAP you into subscribing to their graphics/show service. The other program that I know about is SCRDES.EXE which is a SCREEN DESIGNER. I've never run it on the sign. It is a windows based program that doesn't use the NORMAL file structure. It also can't deal with BLK moveable graphics or ZBK Zoom graphics, and you can't import or export the graphics that you do create from it. (In short it appears pretty useless to me.)

.DSN Files
These are the actual "slides" that appear on the 2010-A screen. Their structure was the real mystery to crack for me and here it is (for free!).
BYTE 1 + BYTE 2 (X 256) = # OF DATA BYTES FOLLOWING
EXAMPLE: (FILE LENGTH 1071) 1ST BYTE = 45
2ND BYTE = 4
4 X 256 = 1024, 1024 + 45 = 1069 (DATA BYTES)
1069 + 1ST TWO = 1071 (FILE LENGTH)
As the data bytes are read, if the 1st two bits=11, then the next BYTE is REPEATED the number of times represented by the lower 6 bits of the 1st byte, otherwise it is a single 4-pixel byte. This is a form of simple compression to make the .dsn files smaller so you can get more of them on the floppy disk.

.BLK Files
These are "overlay" slides that can be "moved" over the top of a .dsn to create simple animation. They are only referenced by the "MOVE" command in the .shw file. They are not compressed.
BYTE 1 + BYTE 2 (X 256) = # OF "Y" LINES
BYTE 3 + BYTE 4 (X 256) = # OF "X" BYTES
BYTE 5 (I'm not sure, but I know it is part of the header)
The rest of the bytes are straight 4-pixel bytes. Since the .blk file is "overlayed" on the .dsn, most of it is BLACK so the "XOR'ing" keeps the .dsn as the background.