Hi rcard,
Can you post your code or a screen capture of the loop that you are using?
From what I read, you are trying to display a date as "04/22/08" and this is blinking because when it sees "//", you display nothing. Is this correct?
My first question is: Why do you update the display every second? Is the date the only thing being displayed?
Are the only things coming from the RS232 port "//" or "date"?
Also, does the loop also handle the refresh of the display?
Now.. concerning the shift register.. although this may not be the solution... but to understand the issue better.. Do you write / update the value in the shift register for every iteration of the loop based onwhat was obtained from the serial port? If so, do you write the date, then an empty string, and so on? A selector could be a good solution not to update the value if "//" was read.
Check if you have "//" and if TRUE, then wire the left shift register to the TRUE case of the selector and wire the new valid value to the FALSE case of the Selector. This is better than using a Case Structure... although I have not seen your code.
Hope this gives you an idea. A Selector looks like a large triangle with 3 inputs (boolean selector in the middle) and 1 output.
RayR
