Re: Nokia PCD8544 (5110 LCD display) is a little strange

Home Evil Mad Scientist Forums Electronics Nokia PCD8544 (5110 LCD display) is a little strange Re: Nokia PCD8544 (5110 LCD display) is a little strange

#20742
Ugi
Participant

Using 8×8-bit blocks for displaying is a method that dates back to at least the mid 80s – it makes writing text easier because you can write consecutive bytes from your character definition into consecutive bytes of “screen memory” to form a character. 

I remember that some BBC micro display modes used 8-pixel rows stacked in 8s so that 8 bytes made a character. But then you are limited to 8-pixel wide characters.  By using 8-bit columns you make it easy to write fonts 8-pixels high by any arbitrary width.  I suppose that for less height you would still have one byte per column in the font definition and just mask off some of the bits when you display it. 

I don’t imagine that this will help you at all but I would guess at this as the reason.