I've gotten a bit further now. The problem was the IO pin on the pic I was using for the RS line was stuck high. I've replaced the pic, but I had to use a 12F675 with a 74164 shift register since it's the only other pic I have now (I bought a bunch of 12F675's and 16F628A's in my last parts order and I can't use the 628A's in my un-upgraded picstart plus. I have some 16F628's on order that I know will work. Also, this is with the whole system powered off 4 new AA batteries. With 3, the display is on, but too faint to tell what it's showing. With 4 it's clearly visable but I'd prefer it darker in a live application. I can make it display characters but some of them are shifted by one letter in either direction. For example 'Hello World!' becomes 'Hfllo Woqld"' and 'Jason' becomes 'Ibsom'. I've looked at the binary values of the ascii characters and it doesn't look like there's any specific bit that's not getting through. My code to output a letter is: MOVLW 'H' ; display a letter CALL SER_OUT CALL PULSE SER_OUT puts the byte on the shift register which is connected to the data lines and then waits 125 microseconds. PULSE raises the E line, waits 125 microseconds, then lowers it and waits 5 milliseconds. I'm using long time delays to try and make sure the problem is not too short a delay. Jason ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Hord" To: Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 7:17 PM Subject: Re: [PIC:] LCD Problems > >It's possible that they are; that might explain why it was so faint when I > >applied power to Vcc, Vee, and Vss. Shouldn't I still see the faint text > >even without a higher driving voltage though? > > No. If it's a high contrast LCD designed to have a negative contrast > voltage applied, even with it tied to zero you'll not see anything on > there. I almost threw one out once as broken before I checked for > that...It doesn't take much drive below zero to get some good > contrast; one cell might help it. > > Mike H. > > _________________________________________________________________ > FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! > http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/ > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics > (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics > > -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.