(as of 9/12/07) Electronics Goldmine is selling 20-piece tubes of IEE 3585R dual 14-segment displays for $15! That's only $0.38 per character!

look here: http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G16464

The catch? They're matrixed 7x2 (per digit), so you have to "charlieplex" them. But hey, that's cool, because that means with just an attiny2313 we should be able to do 6 characters with no extra parts and still have enough pins for two buttons.

You could do a nice 6-digit clock or scrolling display with very few parts.

I wonder, would you have enough time for refresh if you used a 32 khz watch crystal?

If anyone is interested I have figured out the pinout on this part. I could not find a datasheet online for it.

drmemory
@
matrixwide
.
com

That is an excellent price. A 32 kHz crystal *might* be adequate if you're clever with your source code. I try to keep my refresh rate above 500 Hz; lower than that tends to bother me.

The only thing that I would worry about is that these displays are probably not very bright-- running each segment with low duty cycle may not make the overall display bright enough to read, depending on circumstances-- but, you'll have to be the judge of that.

(I have worked with some 17-segment displays in the past that were not really readable if you multiplexed them at all-- they had to be driven in parallel.)

You're correct, they're not super bright. I've only gotten as far as figuring out the pinout. I don't know how they look when multiplexed. Can't be too awful since that's the only way they can be used.

TANSTAAFL ;-)