Hello dhenshaw,
Many thank's for the link to the patent, very interresting !
I'm out of home until friday, I will tell you friday or saturday when back to home the way I drive it.
Just some infos I remember:
There are 50 pins for 6 characters 5x7 dots panel.
14 pins for rows (2 for each row)
30 pins for each column
and actually I don't know for the 6 others, but as writen in the patent may be one for each character?
More to come !