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[on:]

 i have a 14 x 112 led message board that i salvaged from the local dump where i live. the panel is driven by 74164n 8 bit shift registers.  i have tested each row of leds individually and they all work, a pretty sweet deal since the display is from 1985! the controller board for it is fried so i was wondering if i could use my arduino uno to drive the display. since i am planning to use my arduino i want to try and make the display pull RSS feeds off the Internet and display them in a scrolling manner. a friend of mine owns a tack;le shop and wants to be able to post live feed from his website, at the moment he does not have a RSS feed so i am open to any way to pull the data off the web to be able and display it 
 

[Reply #1 on:]

I'm sure you can find a way to drive it from the arduino. Either you can use some of the existing registers or just bypass it all and go straight to the places that you tested the leds from. I'm not sure about the RSS bit sorry, but ive heard of people doing it so it must be possible.

[Reply #2 on:]

Nice find!
The 74164s are the 14 pin pads at the top controlling the vertical collection?
What controls them horizontally?
The 74164 is a 5V part that can only sink 8mA and source 0.4mA. Are there transistor in there somewhere also?

[Reply #3 on:]

It would work somewhat with my design for a Silent Radio sign at bobdavis321.blogspot.com 

[Reply #4 on:]

the way that i tested each led was to attach +5v the row of anodes, and drag the ground across each column of cathodes. each column has a 2n4401 transistor. yes the pads shown above are the 74164s. i am guessing its  cascading shift registers?  the rows are controlled via 14 connections horizontal. and the columns  via shift registers. 112 columns driven by 14 8 bit shift registers