Repairing an DEC LA424 Printer

[Gary Oliver]

I've inherited an LA424-A2 printer that had been stored for a while but 
now has obvious problems.  Powering up 'jogs' the paper feed motor, 
flashes the three green LEDS on the panel through a rapid sequence, but 
then it stops with the display showing what appears to be a fault code.  
Unfortunately, one of the other parts that is failing is the LCD (16 
char I think) that should be showing a fault code.  It appears to be "CO 
<something>" but I can barely make out the "CO".

Is this LCD use a traditional byte-wide interface and can it be replaced 
with one of the current crop of cheap LCD modules?

Once I can see the fault code, I can begin to determine what else is 
failing, though the manual doesn't seem to be much help on error codes: 
they seem to be simple state-of-operation codes.

Thanks,

Gary