I am looking at a chip which only uses 1.8 volt power and has diode clamps to the power and ground rails. I want to drive a 3 volt LCD display. The chip maker tells me, "Swinging 3.3v open drain is pretty easy". Maybe I am having a brain cramp, but I can't think of how to do this in a way that doesn't require a transistor or buffer. That was the context, I stated I could use other devices that don't require the use of buffers for 3.3 volt drive.
Obviously the "easy" way is to drive an SPI or I2C port device with enough outputs to control the LCD, or even to use an LCD driver chip. That's fine if that is what I have to do. I just don't want to add another chip or two or three driving up the cost by another several bucks. At that point I would just use a chip with LCD compatible drivers built in.
Am I missing something? Is this easy to do without buffers or external driver chips?
Rick