always be I was hoping that was the case :-) Seems like a lot of 80's display hardware have common ways of failing. count of yep - that was exactly the problem - I found that out more by accident than anything before reading your reply :) I pulled the case off and just went to tweak the horizontal hold pot to see what effect it had on the display (to try to track down the fault a bit further) and the display choked into life as soon as I touched it. now I just need to make a suitable comms lead, I seem to have lost all of mine :) cheers Jules --