(19)
(11) EP 0 121 070 A3

(12) EUROPEAN PATENT APPLICATION

(88) Date of publication A3:
13.01.1988 Bulletin 1988/02

(43) Date of publication A2:
10.10.1984 Bulletin 1984/41

(21) Application number: 84101729

(22) Date of filing: 20.02.1984
(84) Designated Contracting States:
DE FR GB

(30) Priority: 07.03.1983 US 472783
07.03.1983 US 472784
07.03.1983 US 472776

(71) Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
 ()

(72) Inventors:
  • Emerson, Geoffrey Alan
     ()
  • Ellis, Joseph J., Jr.
     ()
  • Apperley, Norman
     ()
  • Edwards, Roger Joseph
     ()
  • Foster, Raymond Lewis James
     ()
  • Haigh, David Christopher
     ()
  • Haslam, Michael
     ()
  • Verey, Peter
     ()

   


(54) Plasma display management systems


(57) A display management system for one or more large plasma gas panel displays (11) is organised to splitthe display management operations between a host processor (20), a system microprocessor (21) and a picoprocessor (27). The picoprocessor (27) is the heart of a common internal bus (31) plasma display adapter (22). The program for the display is downloaded from the host processor (20) to the system microprocessor (21). The microprocessor generates op codes and initialises display parameters. The plasma display adapter provides control for the plasma panel interface, serialisation of character generator data, translates display position addresses for absolute cartesian coordinates to panel address, and computes the boundaries of dislay panel write and erase operations. Interaction between the system microprocessor and the plasma display adapter is minimised by a code list contained in the microprocessor memory and fetched by direct memory access. This code list contains high level commands which the picoprocessor in the adapter decodes and translates into simple commands for the surrounding interface logic.






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