System for driving a gas discharge display

In a gas discharge display including a plurality of characters, each said character having at least an anode and one or more character segment cathodes, a method of driving said display comprising the steps of:

• sequentially scanning said character anodes to cause said anodes to be sequentially connected to a source of voltage;
• simultaneously establishing a potential difference between a scanned anode and selected cathodes of each of said characters, said potential difference being sufficient to cause ionization of the gas between said selected cathodes and a scanned anode;
• and
• biasing all even character cathodes into a non-conducting state whenever an odd character anode is selected during said scanning step and biasing all odd character cathodes into a non-conducting state whenever an even character anode is selected during said scanning step, whereby streamers between adjacent character positions are prevented.

In a gas discharge display including a plurality of characters, each said character having at least one anode and one or more character segment cathodes, the improvement comprising:

• means for sequentially generating and applying anode drive signals to said character anodes;
• means for generating and applying cathode drive signals to selected cathodes of each of said characters, said cathode drive signals being indicative of one or more character segments to be energized;
• and
• means responsive to said anode drive signals for biasing all even character cathodes into a non-conducting state whenever an anode drive signal is applied to an odd character anode and for biasing all odd character cathodes into a non-conducting state whenever an anode drive signal is applied to an even character anode, whereby streamers between adjacent character positions are prevented.

In a gas discharge display including a plurality of characters, each said character having at least one anode and one or more character segment cathodes, the improvement comprising:

• means for sequentially applying anode drive signals to said character anodes comprising a source of voltage and means for sequentially scanning said character anodes to cause said anodes to be sequentially connected to said voltage source;
• means for simultaneously applying cathode drive signals to said cathodes comprising first and second cathode driver means respectively connected to all odd character position cathodes and all even character position cathodes, each said cathode driver including a blanking input, said cathode driver means responsive to said cathode drive signals for establishing a potential difference between a scanned anode and selected cathodes of each of said characters, said potential difference being sufficient to cause ionization of the gas between said selected cathodes and a scanned anode;
• means responsive to odd character position anode drive signals for generating and applying a blanking signal to the blanking input of said even character position cathode driver to cause all said even character cathodes to be biased into a non-conducting state;
• and
• means responsive to even character position anode drive signals for generating and applying a blanking signal to the blanking input of said odd character position cathode driver to cause all said odd character cathodes to be biased into a non-conducting state, whereby streamers of ionized gas between adjacent character positions are prevented.