love some advice on microprocessors

[piratepaul]

All you need is 156 switches, 156 resistors and a power supply.
If you want them to switch automatically, flash and chase etc it gets more complicated.
You can set up a counter to count to 156 and switch with transistors for chasing and paturns, how complex do you want switching to be?

Tar&stuff.

[piratepaul]

You could count to 4096 and have 4096 combinations of lights in a sequence on 12 wires.
I don't spose that helps unless you read the book.

Tar&stuff.

[piratepaul]

You could count to say just 4.

00
01
10
11
That's 0 to 3, there are 4 logic states, each could switch any combination of LEDs, that's a 2 wire system, 3 wires gives 2^3 (2 to the power of 3) 12 wire input gives 2^12 =4096 combinations. The combination for any number in a count can be encoded and decoded to switch any number of LEDs, just as it can be made to light any number on 7 set displays.
How complex do you want, do you want it to change or just switch on?
If you look up 7 segment display and learn to light the segments, what you are trying to do is similar except you need to switch transistors because the LEDs draw 700mA.

Tar&stuff.

[piratepaul]

You could perhaps... give each LED a resistor, a transistor, a flipflop or latch, and a combinational logic circuit so ....

When the LED is on it stays on until it is switched off, each combinational circuit is an address which could be accessed via a simple control circuit.

You could add sound to light by pulsing the flipflop clocks via transistors base being fed from the speaker.

Tar&stuff.

[piratepaul]

It would be easier if you had 128 or 256 LEDs.

Tar&stuff.