One for the LCD gurus.
Is the following possible: I want to re-define all the alphabetical characters in a 16x4 LCD so that they display sideways. ie instead of using it as 4 rows of 16 characters, I want to turn it on its side and use it as 16 rows of 4 characters. I assume that this means creating a custom font.
The LCDs won’t be addressed often, or used in a time-critical way, so it’s not important that they be HD44780 types, as long as they are supported in MIOS.
Or am I going to end up using a GLCD?
Is the following possible: I want to re-define all the alphabetical characters in a 16x4 LCD so that they display sideways. ie instead of using it as 4 rows of 16 characters, I want to turn it on its side and use it as 16 rows of 4 characters. I assume that this means creating a custom font.
As far as I know the HD44780 only has support for 8 custom characters.
The LCDs won’t be addressed often, or used in a time-critical way, so it’s not important that they be HD44780 types, as long as they are supported in MIOS.
Or am I going to end up using a GLCD?
yes, it’s GLCD then - HD44780 is the only character mode display directly supported by MIOS 
But if timing is not very critical, there’s an easy solution: just get a GLCD with T6963 controller (they’re quite cheap e.g. on eBay) and use it with the vertical mode driver.
S
What do you know: Sparkfun have the HD4478 data sheet (warning: PDF). I’ll have to read that.
As far as I know the HD44780 only has support for 8 custom characters.
Seems wikipedia agrees
FWIW I have seen HD44780 compatible chips with extended CGRAM (memory for custom chars) but they’re rare.
Lot’s of cheap GLCD solutions around though