2mA is indeed very low current for decent brightness on a LED display. I assume by "Packard" you mean this is a Hewlett Packard device? What is the display height, colour, etc. Something with these specs might just work in Microchip's examples. Martin R. Green elimar@bigfoot.com ---------- From: Josef Hanzal[SMTP:euroclass@PHA.PVTNET.CZ] Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 1997 11:33 AM To: PICLIST@mitvma.mit.edu Subject: Re: Multiplexing Seven Segment Displays > So you can see why, IMNSHO, despite Microchip's examples, it is not really > practical to drive a multiplexed LED display directly from a PIC, at least > not the character drive anyway. You can probably get away with driving the > segments directly, and driving the characters via transistor or other > buffers, but this will require fairly efficient or small LED's. Using low current display is really essential. I got good results with Packard's HDSP-H111 or HDSP-H101 in triplexed display. Their nominal current is 2 mA, but I used 1k resistors in series with cathodes which yields about 1 mA per segment. At that current the display still shines very nice. Regards Josef