LCD Control Wires Split Across 2 PORTS

[kg6vkg]

Greetings. I bought the PCWH software last week and am trying to get familiar with it. I am pretty familiar with the pic assembler, and am now trying to branch into the C language.

I am using:

Microcontroller: PIC 18LF4520
LCD: 4x16 character Hitachi HD44780 LCD.

and I have #included the lcd.c file from the PICC C library.

In the new project wizard I selected to have the LCD driver installed. Now I am trying to see how I am going to adapt your LCD library to my application. I see in the LCD program it relies on me overlaying the “struct lcd_pin_map” over a port. I am not sure how to make this work for me.

struct lcd_pin_map { // This structure is overlayed
BOOLEAN enable; // on to an I/O port to gain
BOOLEAN rs; // access to the LCD pins.
BOOLEAN rw; // The bits are allocated from
BOOLEAN unused; // low order up. ENABLE will
int data : 4; // be pin B0.
} lcd;

In my application:

My LCD Pin setup:
RE0: RS
RA5: R/W
RA4: Enable

RA0: LCD-DB4
RA1: LCD-DB5
RA2: LCD-DB6
RA3: LCD-DB7

My problem lies in the RE0 pin. Is this going to be a major problem that I am split across two ports? I don’t have an entire port to dedicate to the LCD. PORTA is the only contiguous port I have available. PORTA starts at 0xF80, and PORTE starts at 0xF84.

What is my best solution?

If anyone has any ideas let me know. I would appreciate any help any one has.

Best Regards,
Mark McKinley

[PCM programmer]

[kg6vkg]

That code worked perfect, thanks for the links. My LCD is working great now.

-Mark