On Wed, 7 Sep 2016 13:16:38 +0000 (UTC) frank wrote in
Message id: :

frank wrote:

I'm going to try to swap the last and first grid connection, that should
give me some more hints (I hope).

swapping the grids leave the bad digits at the same physical place, of
course the displayed characters swap too.
This is another point in favour of bad VFD, which is unobtanium anyway,
it's a futaba 16-SY-03Z.

I think you're right. That's a real weird failure mode, though.
Not unobtanium.
http://www.plccenter.com/en-US/Buy/FUTABA/16SY03Z
but ridiculousium.

Any reason you can't move to a newer programmer? You're not programming
2708s or anything?