> ... debounce 'E' ...

That explains a lot, as I was indeed missing something
fundamental about LCD's:  I was not aware that it would
jump to the next character, so I didn't debounce.
Just tried a tactile switch instead, and can get it to
set just one character at a time.

> ... why not PIC controlled instead of manual ...

This was just an experiment (incremental development to
it's extreme :-).  Forgot my PIC programmer back in Texas
but I just got a 7407 and will re-build the programmer for
the next phase of the LCD experiments.

Much thanks,
-Neil.

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