> Thanks to all for the suggestions. Here are some of them with responses. > Sorry this is kind of long but I wanted to get it all together. I also se= em > to have had some success I discuss towards the bottom. > "You need to initialize your LCD to display any thing as far contrast you should see the change on the screen. Check the voltage on contrast pin ? what 's the voltage ?" I'm trying to initialize the LCD with the Predko code but I'm not certain that code is correct. I have a 10k pot hooked up to the contrast pi= n and I can take it from 0v to 5v and never saw a difference in contrast. "Maybe the screen IS initialised but there's no data displayed ?" A definite possibility but I should at least be able to see the contrast adjust with no data being displayed (if I have a function LCD and have wired it correctly) "LCDs are pretty unforgiving about over-voltage on Vcc and it doesn't take much to stuff them. It's never accidentally had (much) more than 5V on it ?" It is entirely possible. I have a couple of kids that are intereste= d in my project that might have helped me out (why have kids if you can't blame them for stuff...). If I'm reading the spec sheet right it looks like 7v is the max it can handle and I highly doubt I've been over that. I say that because I built a little 5v power supply from a schematic and it actually only puts out something like 4.4v. I then hooked this up to one of those fancy power supplies that lets you set the voltage and current and I may have been over 5v when I ran up the voltage but only by a quarter volt or so. "However, extended temperature LCDs require negative voltage on the contrast pin. Some of them will show absolutely nothing until the contrast pin gets below zero" I don't think I need a negative voltage but how exactly woul I do that if I wanted to? Some success? I've been playing with this a bit tonight and seem to have stumbled across something that made this sort of work. I was testing the voltages between the Vdd pin and the Vo pin to see what they were after messing with the pot and at one point I shorted between them. My board rebooted and suddenly I saw some dark squares! Not exactly time for the happy dance but I may be making progress with this. Now when I adjust the pot I do see the contrast go up and down. I don't seem to see the pixels show up until that pin is about 1.2v. Not sure if that's good or bad. Still don't see the text I'm trying to ouput though. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. If anyone else happens to have see= n these types of issues I'd still like to hear final resolutions as this seem= s a little too magical. I've written software for a while now and have always seen magic code (that debug version that doesn't have the problem that the release version does) but I didn't know the electrical side of things had the same sort of magic. I understand the software magic. Just wish I understood the electrical magic a little better. Thanks, James -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist