OK demon, im not sure why they say it can do SPI if its only got 2 data lines? As for buying one, Ive been off work along time with no income so even though its just a few bucks I have to make sure its going to do what I need it to do. I have 2 LCD's here with serial boards on them but cannot find manuals on the darn things as there so old, havent been able to get them to work. I also have one that is more recent but its in parts and missing a couple. have not been able to regenerate it back to life.
I have several ICs that have SPI interfaces on them even though Ive never used them (volume controld, temp guages, port expanders and such) and thats why I was perfering to use SPI, and I knew you could use more than one SPI device on a pic at the same time, but have not been able to tell if you can do that with I2C. Also I know you cant mix I2C and SPI on the same PIC.

As far as the serout part, its a single pin output and I dont have to do alot of configuration bits and such, just one line of code to make it work. How much code is needed for SPI or I2C to turn those options on and then use them? not sure.

Mark, what a great link, its got everyting to build one. I may make one just to see how well it works, its even possible to upgrade it with more functions Thanks for that link.

If I could read the HEX from one of these that I have now and had the board working I could just duplicate them or upgrade them to a more current line of code. one of these was made back in 1996 and is covered in dirt and debris. no wonder it doesnt work.

but I really would like to find out how to use those cheap ones on ebay, if they cant do SPI I would like to find true SPI ones too so I have a choice.