I know such displays do exist - for example, the company for which I am working manufactures such for it's own needs - my question was, whether you do have the hardware already made or not. OK it sounds you don't.

Don't attempt to use multiplexing, although you will be told to do so by many. It is a killer path for a newbie, believe me.

The simplest and perhaps also the best way is to use a shift/latch combination, such as 74HC595, outputs tied to individual LEDs plus series resistors to limit current to LEDs. You will need 200 pcs of them for the 16x100 display. It would be better to use dedicated current-source output ICs (Allegro, Toshiba, SiTi), but their availability in your site might be a problem.

Then, you tie the '595s' data in pins to data out pins so that you form a chain for each row of LEDs. In theory, all CLK and LATCH inputs should be wired together, but that would impose an immense load, so you should perhaps tie only a few together (say, 10), and use some simple non-inverting gate for buffering, maybe in several stages.

You will need to consider also mechanical construction of the whole display. For the prototype, don't expect any slim design.

You will need to consider also powering issues. You will want to supply some 8mA to a single LED (this is limited by the 595's total supply current limit), so a fully glowing display will consume some 13A of current! This is also significant power - 65W at 5V, so you might want to consider some slightly decreased voltage (but that might bring up other issues).

This all said, we didn't even come near to '51-specific issues. In the abovementioned arrangement, you will need 16 data output pins (one for each row), 1 pin for clock, and one for latch.

The nice thing in this arrangement is the scrolling - it's only to produce data for the first = rightmost column, issue a single clock and a latch pulse...

All in all, this is NOT a school project, and I would recommend you to drop it and chose something simpler. But that's upon you and your supervisor.

JW