> While looking at the Business section of the Clobe and Mail the
> Tamagotchi story caught my attention.  After the (very active) thread on
> anti-lock brakes I thought this wasn't all that off topic neither.    Ya
> right! :)
>
> Anyways, who has taken their kid's virtual pet appart yet?  You meanies!
> I was curious as to what they were using for brains and thought perhaps
> someone could enlightened me.  It looks like I'll have to go out and buy
> myself one now to experiment... or maybe I should have kids.  They also
> have that neat little LCD...  Anyone use it yet?  Please let me know
> what you know on Tamagotchis and their inners.

I haven't looked at the Tamagotchi-brand products, but I have taken apart
a Tiger(R) Compu-kitty and another company's "Cool Doggy".  Both devices
use die-bonded MCU's with display drivers built-in; the "Cool Doggy" has
a 29x16 display wired as such, while the Compu-Kitty has a 29x16 display
wired as a 58x8 (i.e. split down the middle) for better duty cycle and
contrast.  I don't know who makes those particular MCU's since there's no
packaging on them other than the blob, but expect that they're mask-prog'd
4-bit'ters.

I think if you want to play around with LCD's the only way to go is to get
modules with drivers or controllers built-in (with drivers, you still have
to generate the timings on multi-plexed displays, while controllers include
enough memory and logic to scan the entire display without CPU interven-
tion).  Interestingly, I've not seen any smallish graphic displays with
drivers included; they all seem to include controllers.  Some of the larger
ones from Timeline et al include drivers only, but there's no way a PIC can
usefully manage a 320x240 display without adding external RAM (which then
defeats much of the purpose of using the PIC).  If the application requires
showing 16x16-dot characters, then the task might almost be reasonable on
the larger PICs (20x15 characters==300 bytes) but most applications will
demand too mcuh RAM.  On the other hand, a 120x32 display with driver only
might be fun; the PIC could then be programmed to provide a variety of
display modes (2-5 lines depending upon character size, with different
options for inter-line spacing).  Even on a controller-based display such
a project might still be fun; anyone know of a good source for small gra-
phical displays?