Hi there

Darren, I think you are making a mistake with the A4 line. You say that you
have a pull-down resistor there. Since the output of A4 as an open drain (CMOS
talking, not bipolar), you must use a pull-up resistor, not a pull-down. Note
that with a pull-down resistor, you never get an high level there so the LCD
enable line never changes. About the 1K resistor, I've used pull-up's of 10K
without problems (even with TTL logic). If power consuption is important to you,
you may try to increase those pull-up resistors. It also seems to me that you
don't need the pull-up in RA3 (in fact, from all the pins, only RA4 needs an
pull-up resistor, if beeing used as outputs). I'm using a 16C84 with an LCD
and also use port A for outputs. I don't use the pull-up's or pull-down's and
don't have any problem, except that RA4 pin witch in fact *needs* a pull-up.
R. Ivanov also makes some good advises on his mail. You may check that also.
Hope this helps. Try it and say what were the results.

Fernando Soares