I'm a beginner in micros so this may not help much also it's been 6 months since I worked with it so I may not explain it correctly. I hooked up a LCD to my Cygnal processor according to HKRMicro.com and mine wouldn't work at first either. I finaly figured out that there was not enough pullup resistance. This created an RC time effect on the lines that wouldn't allow the lines to change states fast enough. So I added pullup resistors to all 8 data lines to the LCD and it worked. I hope this helps!