The PPS-4 was
actually a bit more 'sophisticated' than I
first thought. One other thing that was unexpected was
that they are powered eg. 0 and negative 9V. I wonder why it's like that...
The early 70's LSI was mostly PMOS.
Simpler devices were often a good match to a 9V battery in handheld devices where that
was the target. You wouldn't believe how much effort was put into putting LED drivers
on the same chip where they could (often they couldn't and the LED driver was off the
main logic chip.)
More complex PMOS logic often had special supplies for clock and enable lines. You often
find small switching converters (magnetics or charge pump) to generate the required
voltages.
A little later high-density NMOS also would use oddball voltages (both positive and
negative depending on application) for density's sake. e.g. 8080A.
Some good examples of how some handheld devices generated the necessary oddball voltages
at
http://www.jacques-laporte.org/HP35%20power%20unit.htm
Tim.
Thank you for that explanation.
I still don't understand the reason for the rev. polarity, but it seems that high
would then be -9v?
I guess its because of the way the PMOS gates are made.
Why are the LED drivers so difficult to make, is it because of the 'high' (a few
mA) current ?
Regards
Benjamin