We've bought one of those rolling LED displays that can display 10
characters. It can be controlled via a clumsy remote, and more usefully by
an RS232 lead.

Information seems sketchy though and it's very buggy (in clock mode one of
the characters is corrupt, and this isn't a LED fault). I've worked out how
to send it messages, what I'd ideally like to do is control it at a deep
level, setting what are presumably simple latches to define the dot shapes.
The trouble is that although you can send it new values to scroll on or
appear instantly, doing so is glitchy - not seamless enough to display a
synced up clock. If I send it a minute's worth of data with a delay between
each second's value, the result is not precise - the internals obviously
aren't precisely timed.

I also can't find a way to programmatically set the internal clock - that
would be half the battle. I found a secret command that causes the clock to
appear (ascii code 17), and I can almost make a Pacman game on the display,
but the designers seemed to have overlooked fundamental requirements.

There's no company name, it's just a made in Taiwan box with a maplin code -
actually at home here I can't seem to find the item on the Maplin site.

Anyone worked out how to do anything devious with this - such as set the
custom characters through RS232 (that would sort of work)?

Geoff.