The LH1594/LH1595 are LCD drivers with a built-in character ROM suitable for driving small scale dotmatrix LCD panels, and which are capable of being directly connected to the bus line of a microcomputer. The 8-bit parallel or serial data transferred from a microcomputer is used to generate LCD drive signals for displaying characters. Incorporating a character ROM which has font characters configured in the format of 5 x 8 dots and a character RAM which allows the user to define characters, the LH1594/LH1595 provide a higher freedom of display. Since the LH1594/LH1595 have 80 output pins for a segment drive circuit and 17 output pins for a common drive circuit in a single chip, a display system for 16 characters x 2 lines can be implemented easily. The LH1594/LH1595 enable an LCD system for battery-operated, handcarrying information equipment by securing lower power consumption and wider operating voltage range.