I bought some chinese max7219 on Ebay and I had exactly the same problem as MartinM57. (displaytest allways on)
I resolved the problem by using this program:
http://www.phanderson.com/picaxe/max7219_1.html
And I defined the Displaytest register ($0f) in the beginning and the first thing to do in the setup procedure was to put $00 (normal operation) in the Displaytest register.
The chinese max7219 worked perfectly after that...
I resolved the problem by using this program:
http://www.phanderson.com/picaxe/max7219_1.html
And I defined the Displaytest register ($0f) in the beginning and the first thing to do in the setup procedure was to put $00 (normal operation) in the Displaytest register.
The chinese max7219 worked perfectly after that...