Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!oliveb!pyramid!weitek!practic!vlsisj!davidc From: davidc@vlsisj.VLSI.COM (David Chapman) Newsgroups: sci.electronics Subject: Re: What interface do LCDs use? Summary: if it's old, probably ugly Message-ID: <15314@vlsisj.VLSI.COM> Date: 26 Sep 89 02:44:00 GMT References: <6499@ux.cs.man.ac.uk> Reply-To: davidc@vlsisj.UUCP (David Chapman) Organization: VLSI Technology Inc., San Jose, CA Lines: 42 In article <6499@ux.cs.man.ac.uk> tait@v1.ee.man.ac.uk (David Tait) writes: >Hi all, > >I recently bought a liquid-crystal display (LCD) module from a local >electronics junk shop for no better reason than it was cheap, looked >useful and I thought I might learn something about this technology. The >display is made by Toshiba (model ZQ8045D-101, circa 1986 I'd guess), and I have a couple of displays lying around (also 1986 vintage) that I bought on the promise of specs in the mail. Ha! They never sent them. I haven't had the time nor inclination to start poking around like you did, but... >leading to pins 16 and 8 of the standard chips, plus checking the polarity >of electrolytics connected to the LA5316, I connected a 5V supply (I think >a -5V supply is also used, but I grounded this pin). Anyway, I was >rewarded by a randomly changing display (vertical bars mostly) when I >touched some of the unconnected edge connector pins. The display >appears to have 200 rows of 640 pixels (a very useful size). Once I _did_ get some specs, but they were for the wrong display! What they told me is that I needed +5 and -8 (or -13; I remember seeing 13 somewhere), plus two data lines, plus a clock. You send in raster data (another reason I never messed with them; I didn't want to build a 10- or 20-IC display circuit to go in my homebrew portable) and a bunch of other stuff. My display had 11 or so wires too, and I think they used all of them (at least the similar display in the spec did). >... My best guess is that it uses a raster mode >with X and Y clocks, X and Y resets (horizontal and vertical sync) and >serial data taken in 4-bit chunks. You're probably very close to the truth here. Let me dig up the spec sheet (if I still have it); if it disagrees with anything I've just said here I'll repost. Send me E-mail if you're interested in a Xerox of my spec sheet (assuming I find it, it's 3rd generation already) and we'll work out postage etc. -- David Chapman {known world}!decwrl!vlsisj!fndry!davidc vlsisj!fndry!davidc@decwrl.dec.com