Patent ID: 6992647

Claim:
An organic electroluminescent (EL) drive circuit having a digital-to-analog (D/A) converter circuit including a current mirror circuit having an input side transistor portion supplied with a predetermined drive current and a plurality of output side transistors connected in parallel to form a current mirror connection, said output side transistors selectively operating correspondingly to a display data inputted correspondingly to bit positions of the display data to generate an analog current corresponding to the display data in an output terminal of said D/A converter circuit as a total of currents flowing through said output side transistors, said organic EL drive circuit comprising: a plurality of parallel connected input side transistors provided in said input side transistor portion; a switch circuit connected in series with at least one of said input side transistors; a current source for driving said input side transistors with a predetermined constant current; and a control portion for ON/OFF controlling said switch circuit, wherein, when said switch circuit is in ON stage and a value of the analog current from said D/A converter circuit becomes larger than that corresponding to the number of bits of the display data, which can be converted into analog current value, said control portion turns said switch circuit OFF to set the display data corresponding to the number of the bits in said D/A converter circuit to thereby generate the large analog current value corresponding to one or more bits exceeding the number of bits of the display data.