Electronic – Transistor array with a common base

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I'm looking for a transistor array IC with a common base to all the transistors, but I'm having some trouble finding what I'm looking for. Essentially, what I want is to take 8 data lines in parallel and be able to (somewhat rapidly) switch them on and off – that is, for 8 lines, switch all of them on and all of them off with one input line. I can do this with 8 individual transistors, splitting the input line itself into 8 parallel bases, but I'm hoping some actual EE out there – i.e., not a dabbler like me – knows of a nice little chip that will do the trick and save me some soldering.

You can imagine what it's like trying to search for "transistor integrated circuit", but that's what I want – an IC with 8 NPN transistors, all of which take their base off of one pin.

MORE DETAIL:

I'm attempting to drive quite a few 14 segment dual digit LED displays (like this one – the internal circuit diagram is important to this issue) with a fancy little LED display driver here (details less important. Fancy 16 bit shift register.) The LED driver has some nice features that would be annoying to duplicate, like individually-controllable PWM dimming for each segment, and this would be just fine with a seven segment LCD without multiplexing. Shift in the bits, latch it up, and we're good.

Unfortunately, the 14 segment LCD's only seem to work through multiplexing, as you have 8 input pins that are multiplexed among 4 different "regions" by choosing the anode. You can't just latch the bits you want on the driver and forget it – you need to control the bits as a combination of anodes and cathodes.

What I'm thinking of now is to drive a closed loop shift register with e.g. 0001 in a loop and choose the 8 cathode inputs by and-ing or switching them 8 at a time out of 32 latched input lines (that is, 2 of the driver chips, but only 8 bits of those chips at any one time). This way I would be able to shift the desired bits into the registers and ignore the whole circuit from the microprocessor's point of view (minus the shift merry-go-round clock pulse, which is minor). Just let it round-robin multiplex itself until I want to come back and display something else.

Best Answer

How about using a 74HC240 or 74HC244 tri-state buffer IC and use the OE input to switch multiple outputs?