"firstly , i only compiled the code that raghu ammended now, i put it onto the micro and i got this on the lcd

EI CAAAA

erm, what does this mean? ! "

Progress. Yes, this is far better a situation than you were in, at the start where you got only black boxes on the LCD!

Now at least your MCU is fetching and processing some code, rather than sitting and scratching, wondering what to do next in a code without flow.

What you want is "ERIC MCNAMARA!"

What you got is "EI CAAAA". Except for the last A in this, all others are alternate characters of what you inteneded to display. You seem to be missing one character for every one that you display. I would strongly suspect your LCD timing.

One suggestion : You are calling ( OK we )the DELAY before enabling the ENABLE bit of the LCD. Instaed try removing it from there and insert it after the "MOV P1, A " in the PRINT routine. This will give the LCD adequate time to do its internal processing. ( yet another way is to poll the BUSY bit but that is another story )

Hope that helps.

Raghu