Letters but no numbers on a HD44780 in WinXP

[carnilio]

So i have abandoned my hopes of getting this to work on Vista 64BIT, atleast for now, and rather connected it to an laptop with an old paralell port instead. And borrowing power from the USB port it lights up fine. IT evne scrools and display the text it sohuld. But any numeric digits are missing Anything of the group "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 ( ) - +" never shows up, despite every letter otherwise does.

THe first time iconnected it it also replaced every "space" with the degree-sign, thoguh after fiddling with it for a while and checking the connectors and settings and everytyhing it suddenly were displaying spaces normally with no further ado, and without me really doing anything. (Bad connection somewhere?)

At the time of writing this i jsut connected it again after checking it, and for a brief moment (or one of the several pages of display i have) it DID show numbers, but as it kept scrolliing, the number disapapred and only the text remain.

Is it an issue with the update frequency, or do anyone else have any idea of what might be wrong?

On forehand thanks for any help!

[mattcro]

Do you get any other symbols, like !"#$%&'*,-./ or any custom characters?

If not, it could be that the D6/D7 connections (data bit 6 and maybe also 7) are broken or shorted to ground. Check pins 8/9 on the LPT port and pins 13/14 on the LCD (I think those are the ones), and check the cable for continuity (ie not broken internally).

If the connections are all fine, try using a shorter cable (if you are using a really long one) or, if possible, try the LCD on another PC.