Success at last!

After several days of struggling with timing issues, logical vs. bitwise 'or' functions, bit position vs. bit value, and a bit-set function that did not behave as expected, I finally made it: a "hello world" program for a PIC microcontroller and Hitachi HD44780 LCD controller. It's pretty brief and to the point, but I managed to write characters to the display, and have the backlight under program control.
Next project: make it do something useful!
-mark.