I managed to hook the ts7260 ARM board up to the K155ИД1 TTL BCD-decoder/nixie driver chip, the Russian clone of the American 74141. The pinouts are identical. The short story I gleaned from Don Lancaster's venerable TTL Cookbook is that the CMOS levels of the ARM (3.3v) can directly drive one or maybe two TTL gates without anything blowing up. I am thankful that electronic technology has a forward-looking longevity that software should envy.
The ts7260 refuses to generate the promised 5v on its LCD port, so I think the little switch-mode power supply that is supposed to do this has been fried (and I'm not getting into any finger pointing). The same unit apparently services the USB port, which may lend weight to the idea that that port's brains are intact but have become unstuck from its brawn. Blowing up this kind of hardware is not much fun, it simply silently stops working.
Why do the world's languages use the same numerals? Do any deviate?