penelopepug, James and Charles are right. If you look at the data sheets for just about any of the Noritake displays they have a test connector on board and can operate on a serial basis as well as parallel. There are solder jumper settings to set the default baudrate and such. I have used the 2x40, 4x20, with the LCDOUT commands and the 128x64 graphical displays for the past 1 1/2 years with no problems. I prefer the parallel interface for the speed but if you can't afford the I/O pins in your design the serial approch works just fine.

Dave Purola,
N8NTA