LCD is up and running on the 8051.

Got the LCD up and running.

I will format the code a little nicer, and post it shortly. Had hours of problems with this thing, until I tracked down a 3 channel Logic Analyzer (PICKit2! to the rescue!) and found that some pins were floating. I thought I read through all the “Port” sections in the Atmel 8051 Hardware Manual, and it looked like Port 0 sinks and sources current as an output. However, it only uses both when used for external addressing, as a general output it is open drain…Rookie mistake!

Needless to say I switched to Port 2 (internal pullups resistors!)  and all problems were solved!

Code to follow…