Count-up timer with TIL305 - design

After building few clocks and thinking of many more, I wanted to do something slightly different. The "new" idea came one evening while cooking, when I realised I never remember at what time the pasta (food) will be ready. "Was it 20:14 or 20:20?"

I am too lazybusy to set a countdown timer every time and since my short-term memory is not willing to cooperate I chose to try a count-up timer: a simple device that shows elapsed time.

For this task I wanted to use TIL305 5x7 dot-matrix LED displays made in 1970's. Two challenges:

1. they need an appropriate driver
2. they are very current hungry

I had already solved the driver problem by reproducing someone else's idea to adapt an ATtiny2313 microcontroller. You need one ATtiny every TIL305. Cost-wise in 2018 this solution is probably cheaper than using obsolete unobtanium driver chips.

Texas TIL305, Monsanto MAN2A, ...

Since I want my timer to be battery powered, at about 38 mA per 2313&305 pair, I cannot use too many displays. Four digits is the minimum useful IMO ("mm:ss" and "hh:mm" for longer runs), but another idea comes to the rescue: use smaller font, 5x3 dots vs 5x7 and show two digits on each TIL305. This approach has another advantage: limit the required wiring (I won't be doing a PCB!).

How about the timebase? ATtiny's will not synchronise, they will receive both the same external timebase signal and rely on their internal clock to run the code. I could have had one master driver generating the pulse for others, but I am not sure on the internal RC calibration and on longer runs the difference vs 1 pps could be unacceptable. So there will be a 32.768 kHz oscillator and divider with CD4060 chip (because it accepts a wide range of supply voltage).