Slowly working away on my Arduino learning and project for the Internet of Holiday Things RoadTest. Running into some issues on the most basic learning steps such as making an LCD screen work. Maybe you have some suggestions? 
I got this LM041 datasheet & application note - Datasheet Archive from Robert Peter Oakes . It's sturdy built 16x4 display that seems to have weathered the ages quite well.
I went and bought a 10k ohm potentiometer and hooked everything up per the Arduino LCD Tutorial but I don't appear to be having much luck.
The thing that frustrates me most is that one of my past configurations did get my Hello World running but I managed to do something that removed it.
I am using the standard LiquidCrystal library and running example code such as AutoScroll and HelloWorld. As I write this I am cycling through the rest of the example codes and still seeing a lot of Greek letters.
One of the sketches causes my text to come out in a jumble of Greek and Latin characters.
This sketch caused my text to display mostly Japanese!
I am currently trouble shooting this problem by removing different D Pins and seeing what happens.
All pins in is currently rotating the following characters: #, 3, C, S, c, s. This corresponds to the top 4 bits of the combination 0xxx, and the bottom 4 bits always being 0011.
All pins in
Removing DB7 and putting DB6 into Pin 2 is currently rotating the Japanese characters shown below. This corresponds to the top 4 bits with combination 1xxx, and the bottom 4 bits always being 1011. Note that appears that moving the DB6 connection to Pin 2 is causing the first bit in each nibble to hold at 1.
Removing DB7 from Pin 2, and connecting DB6 to Pin 2
Removing DB6 from Pin 3 and leaving DB7 in place seems to cause a display of t,u,v,w,l,),>,<. This corresponds to an upper nibble of 0111, and a lower nibble that is x1xx.
I am not quite sure what I should be doing to fix the issue but will tackle this more in the coming days. One thing to note is that these issues haven't exactly been 100% replicate-able so I apologize in advance if I have a few of the details wrong!
