TK. asked me to rework the PCB, so after a bit of down time on a delayed train:   It's the same basic layout as before, except that the shift registers are on board. This means only a single ribbon connector to the Core is needed = easy wiring. or could we feature-creep an LCD/OLED in? Accordingly there are some pullup/current limiting resistors added, but the 595 should be able to sink the cathode rows without transistors.  3* SOIC16 chips, 3 1206 c