New BD 800 Series Graphics Modules now available from Noritake  Part Number # of Dots # of Characters Dot Pitch (mm) Dot Size (mm) Display Area W x H (mm) PCB Size W x H (mm) Power V/mA (All Dots On) Brightness Control  GU128x32-800  128 x 32 4 x 21 0.65 x 0.65 0.5 x 0.5 83.05 x 20.65 130 x 38.5 5 / 450 16  GU128x64-800  128 x 64 8 x 21 0.65 x 0.65 0.5 x 0.5 83.05 x 41.45 140 x 68 5 / 750 16  GU160x16-800  160 x 16 2 x 26 0.65 x 0.65 0.50 x 0.75 103.85 x 15 154 x 39 5 / 400 16  GU160x32-800  160 x 32 4 x 26 0.635 x 0.635 0.485 x 0.485 101.45 x 20.17 154 x 45 5 / 550 16  GU192x16-800  192 x 16 2 x 32 0.75 x 0.75 0.55 x 0.55 143.8 x 11.8 200 x 33.5 5 / 450 16  GU256x32-800  256 x 32 4 x 42 0.65 x 0.65 0.5 x 0.5 166.25 x 20.65 220 x 50 5 / 750 16

The combination of BD series technology with thin film fine wiring techniques makes Noritake BD series ClGs compatible with graphic display applications. Graphic VFDs using CIG techniques can substantially reduce the number of lead pins, making VFD mounting significantly easier. Additionally, BD series technology assures low voltage driving, low energy consumption and improved luminance.

Introducing The Noritake Tech Center
The Noritake Company, an established Japanese firm almost 100 years old, for the first time has established a group of engineers in Arlington Heights, Illinois to design VFD products in the United States. The purpose is to provide a quicker response to the market needs for customers in North America. A substantial proportion of Noritake's business is generated from markets in the Far East but the display market in North America very often has specific design requirements that are different than those demanded in the Pacific Rim. Noritake wishes to address design issues in a more timely and economical fashion than was formerly possible.

Introducing Noritake's Display API Library
The Noritake Display API library is a portable C language library of routines which will provide an application programming interface (API) to a user application. This API will allow the user application to call functions to perform useful graphics operations, such as "draw a line", or "put text", and will convert these functions to the appropriate bit-level operations for a Noritake VFD display. The library will, in turn. call a lower level interface to actually manipulate the hardware. This 1/0 access layer will convert the API layer bit-level data to actual hardware 1/0 accesses.

The Display API Library can be broken into four main parts: graphics primitives, text primitives. glyph-based text primitives and display control. The primary purpose of this library is to provide Noritake customers with a portable library to allow them to use Noritake VFD displays in their products with a minimum of effort. In order for a customer to port the library to their platform, they must provide, in addition to their application, the I/0 Access Layer and the Digital I/0 Hardware. The I/0 Access Layer will be just a few simple functions that will allow the hardware to write or read to the command or data port on the VFD display. In the demonstration software, these functions will communicate with a digital I/0 board attached to a PC. In a micro-controller-based system, the Digital I/0 hardware may consist of simply an address decode, or it could be a couple of latches or buffers and associated address decode logic.

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