checkpoint-lcd

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LCD panel driver for Check Point P-210/12200 firewall appliances running OPNsense/FreeBSD.

Reverse-engineered the Portwell EZIO-G500 front panel LCD on the Check Point P-210 (model 12200). This is the first open-source driver that actually controls the LCD on these appliances when running alternative firmware like OPNsense.

The Problem

The Check Point P-210/12200 has a front panel LCD (128x64 pixel EZIO-G500) that works perfectly under Check Point's Gaia OS. When you install OPNsense, pfSense, or plain FreeBSD, the LCD just shows a blinking cursor — the built-in sdeclcd lcdproc driver doesn't work because:

1. The SuperIO chip (Winbond @ 0x2E) has the LPT port disabled — sdeclcd tries to use parallel port I/O at 0x378 but reads all 0xFF
2. The LCD actually communicates over serial (/dev/cuau1, COM2) using the EZIO-G500 text protocol, not the parallel port

Even enabling the LPT port in the SuperIO chip doesn't help — the LCD's text interface is serial.

The Solution

cpanel talks directly to the LCD over /dev/cuau1 at 115200 baud using the EZIO-G500 serial protocol:

ESC @ — Initialize/reset display
0x0C  — Clear screen
0x0B  — Cursor home
0x0A  — Newline
Raw ASCII text is displayed directly

Display Specs

Parameter	Value
Display	Portwell EZIO-G500 (128x64 pixel, 8x8 font)
Text Mode	16 columns x 8 rows
Interface	RS-232 serial, 115200 8N1
Device	/dev/cuau1 (FreeBSD) or /dev/ttyS1 (Linux)
Buttons	5+ front panel buttons (via serial or LPT status port)

Building

# On the P-210 (FreeBSD/OPNsense):
make
./cpanel demo

# On Linux (for development):
make

No dependencies. Pure C11. ~500 lines total.

Usage

# Initialize and clear
./cpanel init

# Write text to specific rows
./cpanel write "Line 1 text" "Line 2 text" "Line 3" ...

# Write to a specific row (0-7)
./cpanel text 0 "Hello P-210!"

# System status display
./cpanel status

# Live updating monitor (Ctrl+C to stop)
./cpanel monitor

# Full-screen clock
./cpanel clock

# Animated demo
./cpanel demo

# Use a different serial device
./cpanel -d /dev/ttyS1 demo

Hardware

The Check Point P-210 (model 12200) is an x86 firewall appliance:

• Intel Core i5-750 (4 cores, 2.67 GHz)
• 8-9 GB DDR3 RAM
• 8x Intel 82574L Gigabit Ethernet
• 2x Samsung 480GB SSD (SATA)
• Front panel: EZIO-G500 LCD + buttons + LEDs
• Available on eBay for ~$50-100

Reverse Engineering Story

This driver was built in a single session by connecting a laptop to the P-210's serial console and systematically figuring out how the LCD works:

1. Disassembled OPNsense's sdeclcd.so — found it uses parallel port I/O at 0x378, but the port reads all 0xFF
2. Scanned all I/O ports (0x000-0xFFF) — discovered a Winbond SuperIO chip at 0x2E with the LPT disabled (LDN 1, active=0)
3. Enabled the LPT port via SuperIO config — port came alive but LCD still didn't respond to HD44780 commands
4. Noticed the cursor moved when sending data to /dev/cuau1 (COM2) — the LCD is on the serial port, not parallel
5. Tested the EZIO-G500 serial protocol — ESC @ init + raw ASCII text = working display
6. Mapped the display geometry — 16 columns x 8 rows (128x64 pixels with 8x8 font)

The diag.c, portscan.c, findlpt.c, and serial_test.c files are the actual tools used during this reverse engineering process.

Related Work

• tchatzi/EZIO-G500 — Perl scripts for the EZIO-G500 (graphical mode, incomplete)
• Saint-Frater's RE — EZIO-G500 command set documentation
• Netgate Forum: CheckPoint LCD — Community attempts (unfinished)
• LCDproc Issue #159 — Open request for EZIO-G500 support

License

MIT

Contributing

PRs welcome. Key areas:

• Button input handling (protocol TBD)
• LED control (3 bi-color LEDs on the front panel)
• Graphics mode (the EZIO-G500 supports 128x64 pixel bitmap rendering)
• OPNsense plugin integration
• lcdproc driver