Comment 1 for bug 971904

If someone else encounters this problem, here's how you can manually compile mdm166a support:

sudo apt-get install lcdproc
sudo apt-get build-dep lcdproc
cd /tmp
wget http://altruistic.lbl.gov/mirrors/ubuntu/pool/universe/libh/libhid/libhid0_0.2.15+20060325-2.2ubuntu1_i386.deb
wget http://altruistic.lbl.gov/mirrors/ubuntu/pool/universe/libh/libhid/libhid-dev_0.2.15+20060325-2.2ubuntu1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i libhid0_0.2.15+20060325-2.2ubuntu1_i386.deb
sudo apt-get install libusb-dev
sudo dpkg -i libhid-dev_0.2.15+20060325-2.2ubuntu1_i386.deb
wget http://lcdproc.sourceforge.net/nightly/lcdproc-CVS-current.tar.gz
tar -xzvf lcdproc-CVS-current.tar.gz
cd lcdproc-0.5dev
./configure --enable-drivers=mdm166a
make server
cd server/drivers
sed -i 's|report(\(.*\)%s\(.*\)hid_strerror(ret)|report(\1%d\2ret|' mdm166a.c
sed -i 's|\(\$(mdm166a_LDFLAGS).*\)$|\1 -lhid|' Makefile
make mdm166a.so
sudo cp mdm166a.so /usr/lib/lcdproc/

At this point you should be able to use lcdproc with mdm166a-type VFDs. Try this to stop LCDd and run it in the foreground:

sudo /etc/init.d/LCDd stop
sudo LCDd -f -d mdm166a

If you omit the sudo in front of the last command, you'll probably get an error code 12 which stands for HID_RET_FAIL_DETACH_DRIVER, i.e. the driver could not detach the standard kernel driver.