4 digit LED serial display

I have a 4 digit LED serial display which came in two-two digit displays soldered together on a board. There are 5 pins off the side:

5v = power
GND = ground

DIN = ?
LOAD/CS = ?
CLK = ?

What do the those mean?

Ultimately I need to build a counter with a student. Basically when a button is pushed it will count on the display. Any help someone can provide would be great.

thanks...frustrated teacher

What chip is on them a max serial driver i bet DIN is data, load is latch and CLK is Clock. But you'll need to see what chip there using may even be a shift register.

It does sound to be very shift register-like. Data/Latch/Clock

pwillard:
It does sound to be very shift register-like. Data/Latch/Clock

Indeed - that suggests trying some 74HC595 code in the first instance to see which bits control which segments...

This does not sound like a "serial" display, you might want to check out these:

which you control by sending ASCII characters down the serial line.

KeithRB:
This does not sound like a "serial" display, you might want to check out these:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11441

which you control by sending ASCII characters down the serial line.

I'm not sure what you mean there, they sound EXACTLY like serial displays to me. A 3-wire serial interface is a very common way of driving lots of digits and I've had good success with things like that using the ShiftOut function. Those sparkfun things are crap anyway. I bought one once, never again.

When I think of serial, I think of an RS-232 like interface, not shifting bits into a shift register.

Serial is bit shifting, But we really need the op to post more info about it like what chips is on the board.