John Boxall over at Tronixstuff has a series of Arduino tutorials. This chapter fifty-one of a series will show you how to use MC14489 LED display driver ICs with Arduino:
Recently we’ve been looking at alternatives to the MAX7219 LED display driver IC due to pricing and availability issues (stay tuned for that one) – and came across an old but still quite useful IC – the MC14489 from Motorola (now Freescale Semiconductor). The MC14489 can drive five seven-segment LED numbers with decimal point, or a combination of numbers and separate LEDs. You can also daisy-chain more than one to drive more digits, and it’s controlled with a simple serial data-clock method in the same way as a 74HC595 shift register. Sourcing the MC14489 isn’t too difficult – it’s available from element14, Newark, Digikey, and so on – or if you’re not in a hurry, try the usual suspects like Futurlec.
I use the AS1107 from AMS that works well and is pin compatible with the max7219. I use it for the led matrix link kit on tindie.com
Nice to see other ICs as well?
Should be . not ?
It should be noted that the MC14489 is far from being “easy to source”, it’s been marked NRND which, for all intents and purposes, means it’s extinct.
Also, the MC14489 doesn’t support full-no-decode mode (only handles 4 bits) so it cannot be used with an 5×7 dot-matrix display (just like the MAX7219 can be used with an 8×8 matrix).