Jason White wrote:
> I see no difference between nothing (bare wire) , no resistor (wire , no
> resistor) or having a resistor (wire , resistor) on the LCD driver. any
> other ideas on how I could test this out ? ...
>   
with nothing connected you should not see the character cells.

With the LCD  pin 3 connected to 0V, the top line of 5 x 8 pixels per 
character should be darker/ grey/black at some viewing angle

Here is a schematic
http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/circuits.htm (3rd one on page)
http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/LCDconnect.jpg

Actually the LCD smartie program for windows lets you test a text LCD.

For a Graphics LCD such as KS0107 based, LCD studio does similar.
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