PIC16F876A and LCD interfacing issues with HITECH C

[sunil21]

I have a PICKIT2 clone.
I am trying to interface LCD with PIC16F876A.
As seen in most of the examples, I grounded the RW.
When I used MPLAB HITECH C first , no matter what I did it didn't work. Only showing square black blocks on the first row.

Then I tried mikroe C for pic. It worked fine - Great..
but the code crashed most of the time and was unable to debug without a Mikroe programmer.

so with no option I had to switch back to MPLAB.
I tried the demo board with 12mhz crystal. I tried codes from net for LCD interface.
Lot of delays here and there.. Played with it adjusted... Okay I got it working.

Then I had to work with TIMER1 interrupt and for calculation with FOSC/4 thing , I tried with 12mhz (effective 3mhz (12/4 - I think instruction period is fraction or something).


I found it better to use 4mhz or 8mhz XL so that timing calculations will be easy.

I replaced 12MHZ with 8MHZ Crystal. Now in HITECH C , I again get square blocks.
I tried Mikroe.. it is perfect.

Please tell me what magic mikroe guys have in their code ... Is there some other way to read busy flag??

May be I have to use the RW pin also. One more thing: When I simuate the Mikroe code in proteus it works fine. But with hitech c code it is blank.
Got 10 messages , 1 says : Controller received command whilst busy (must be timing - delay duration)

Any suggestions ?

 

[milan.rajik]

Save the attached file as lcd.h and include it in your code. Test for different clock frequencies. I have used Hi-Tech C __delay_us() and __delay_ms() functions. You might have to include delays.h file. Check in Compiler includes folder.

 

[sunil21]

Thanks for the Code...
Can you provide an example main function to run on MPLAB 8.56

 

[milan.rajik]

Try attached MPLAB 8.92 Hi-Tech PICC 9.83 project. You only have to include lcd.h in your projects and use the LCD functions in the main code.

I have tested for 20 MHz Clock in Proteus and it works fine. Test for different clocks in Proteus and also hadware. When clock is changed remember to modify the line

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Code C - [expand]
1
#define _XTAL_FREQ 20000000UL

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and also the config settings. I have set config in IDE. You can set it also in IDE or in code. For 20 MHz I have set to HS type. If you test it for 4 MHz then set it for XT.

 

[sunil21]

Thanks it seems to be working on mplab and proteus