David,
Thanks for the advice, but I want a optional VFD or LCD display (Due to
cost).  That is why I selected this particular Vacuum Florescent Display.
After reading your post, I think I will not worry about the Busy Flag, if it
is not reliable.  I guess I will do as everyone else and "sit and spin"  I
will hunt down some good delay code/macros that change with xtal
frequency...

Any reference project or code you consider a good starting point (LCD)?

Best regards,
Giles

-----Original Message-----
You might be better off with a different VFD.
The standard 44780 interface has a lot of picky delays that are short enough
to be impractical to implement other than as "sit and spin" delays, this
makes talking to the display rather time consuming.

Some of the VFD units use a three wire clocked serial interface that is much
faster, and easier to implement. Since the delays are much shorter (1-10uS
instead of milliseconds) it is less demanding. Also, no nasty init sequence
to deal with.

I've not found the busy flag on LCDs to be very reliable. Some work, some
don't. Maybe I just got lucky.. :)

--
http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us!
email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body