Well if I could figure out which chips are the controllers, and find some documentation on them, I could wire them up and make them work.
I pulled a display out of an old industrial internet router, and tore up the connector in the process. But I followed the circuits on the board to the controller chip (HD44780) and soldered about 11 wires to it, the thing works. So I'm pretty confident with my small-scale soldering.
However, if I can't find any documentation on the controller chips and what not... I suppose I'll have to give up
Thanks for the reply though.