SerLCD (20x40) - why ROM code A00?

Components & Accessories Displays
1

I’m working with the SerLCD 20x4 and just found to my surprise that it features the HD44780 with a Japanese character set (ROM code A00). Is there a version of the SerLCD that uses the HD44780 with the European character set (ROM code A02) that also has a lot of useful special characters where the Japanese set just has blanks?

If not, why not utilize some of the many empty characters of the Japanese character set e.g. for the 8 user-defined characters? Or for the escape character? Or for directly issuing commands (to save the escape character)? Or is there a fork of the firmware that does this?

2

It’s not the firmware that holds the character set, it’s the HD44780 controller itself. You’d need a custom HD44780 to change the character set.

I’m not aware of a SparkFun version that has the other character set unfortunately.