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From: cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Flat Displays and Portable Computers
Message-ID: <11518@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 15-Jan-87 15:30:11 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.11518
Posted: Thu Jan 15 15:30:11 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Jan-87 02:56:37 EST
References: <1191@ucbcad.berkeley.edu> <191@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <1223@ucbcad.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 24
Summary: Polaroid FlexLCD


At Wescon last year Polaroid was showing a flexible LCD that was made out
of some sort of plastic. The LCD was 6 or 8" wide and as long as you
wanted it. Conductors ran along the top and side. They were trying to
sell "experimenter" packs with a 6" square piece I believe. They suggested
using it as the cover to one of these membrane keyboard bases and then
programming the "keytops" as required. At the time it was not to feasible
to make a portable version but now that Hitachi is sampling CMOS 
LCD controller chips it might be. Running one of the new 32 bitmachines
a slow speed (8Mhz) will sufficiently reduce it's power requirements
that you could make it battery powered. Resolution of the LCD was 
10 mil square pixels. Thus an 8 X 10 sheet would have a resolution of
800 X 1000 pixels, or 100 dpi. Thats 100000 bytes for the display memory
possibly another 100000 for off screen bitmaps. So 256K of display memory
should be acceptable. Probably 1 or 2 Meg of Cmos main memory. With 
battery backup to maintain data integrity. All in an 8.5 X 11 X 1 inch
case. It would be killer.

--Chuck

-- 
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.