DRIVE CIRCUIT, DISPLAY DEVICE AND METHOD FOR SELF-DETECTING AND SELF-REPAIRING DRIVE CIRCUIT

摘要

A drive circuit (20) is provided with an output circuit block (30), an auxiliary output circuit block (40), a reference output circuit block (41), a comparing/determining circuit (50), and switching circuits (60, 61).  At the time of performing self-detection, the switching circuit (60) selects one output circuit from the output circuit block (40), disconnects the selected output circuit and the data line of a display panel (80) from each other, and connects the auxiliary output circuit block (40) to the data line of the display panel (80).  The comparing/determining circuit (50) compares test output signals obtained from the selected output circuit with reference output signals obtained from the reference output circuit block (41), and based on the comparison results, the comparing/determining circuit determines whether the selected output circuit is a failure or not.  Thus, the drive circuit which can detect failures of the output circuit, while driving the display panel without generating a display failure, is provided.