Ok so I have six of these boards done for a total of 96 outputs. I have tested each of these individually ok. I have hooked it up just as before except a separate power connection for vcc for the chip.
I power on all the chips, wait a few min and they are all fine and cool to touch.
I plug in the arduino that has a different power source with a shared ground and 3 of the chips fry.
So I'm not sure if a wire has came loose in my temporary setup or how to hook this up without frying the chips.
I know they are fried because I hook them up again with only vcc and ground and they are extremly hot.
I can replace the chip, hookup the arduino directly to the board instead of a breakout boards of greyscale clock, blank, etc and the board works ok. I know you said that working with higher powered stuff complicates things but this seems more like a hookup issue than a decoupling issue.
Feel free to ask questions, I feel like this can work but i'm just missing something simple.