As chromatix has a couple of times mentioned e-ink displays, I had a look, and found this project by Jan Ostman:

ePaper C64

e-ink works by rotating tiny bi-coloured spheres using electric fields, and is non-volatile so uses zero power in between updates. You can also get tri-colour (black, white, and red) displays.

And according to commentators over on the hpmuseum and on the eevblog forums, the DM42 calculator display is a non-volatile or micro-power LCD from Sharp, which again can hold a static display with (next to?) no power.


Any other experience of zero-power displays?

(Looks like the Sharp display, which is a 400x240 dot matrix, uses 50uW typical (250uW worst case) for the static display: Datasheet (PDF). It's controlled by SPI, needs 5V power, and can accept 5V or 3V3 signals.)

Yes, the Sharp memory displays aren't quite zero-power, and won't keep the image when the supply is removed (like proper e-paper displays do). They are, however, very low power and very simple to drive. The 128x128 one that I've used is also extremely thin.

Hi....is there any developer here who chips away at an e-ink screen? Don't you mind the little screen, absence of shadings and high info slack?

I couldn't want anything more than to realize which model would be the awesome programming in light of the fact that presently my eyes hurt when dealing with EIZO EV2455 (which is a decent screen in any case).

full turnkey assembly