do you feel lucky?

most of these cheap LCDs are based on hitachi 44780 controllers, so they work the same and have the same pinout.

the tutorials differ a litlle due the possibilities of configuration (8 bits, 4 bits), but the HD44780 pinout is the same.

the point is: do you have a working circuit with some 16 or 18 or 40 columns and two lines? if so, try your LCD, check the contrast (pin 3). sometimes people think that the circuit or the program isn't working, but the contrast is too low and the characters aren't visible.

I have 3 LCD around here, two are 16x2 and the other is 40x2, all are brandless but are interchangeable since they use the same controller, but YMMV.

hth

orlando