I have not actually used BASCOM, I just happened to have looked into it recently for one of my clients who were looking for an alternative for the BASIC Stamp.

Anyway, you don't really need the W/R signal on the LCD, as long as the driver routines don't read the BUSY-flag. The BASCOM driver does not use W/R, so it should be tied to GND.
There is a way to use the LCD in 8-bit mode with BASCOM, but that requires the LCD to be memory-mapped. If that is the case on your development board, you should use the $LCD instruction. Details on how to use this are in the manual.

MCS Electronics also has a forum dedicated to their products: www.mcselec.com/forum
I'm sure that all your questions can be answered there.


Best regards,
Rob.