Hi all, a long time ago, I bought several Everbouquet MC1602E-SYL alphanumeric diplays which employed Hitachi HD44780 controller. I used them with Atmel AVR MCUs in many my DYI projects and they worked fine, but I eventually used them all. When I tried to buy more, I found out that they are not manufactured anymore. According to the distributor, MC16021E8-SYL is the direct replacement, so I bought a few of them. Unfortunately, the displays are NOT the same, MC16021E8-SYL displays garbage if I connect it instead of MC1602E-SYL. It appears that MC16021E8-SYL requires a slightly different initialization procedure or more relaxed signal timing (or something), because if I lower the MCU frequency and reset it several times in quick succession, the display *sometimes* initializes correctly and begins to work normally. Jugding from the displayed garbage, it appears that the MC16021E8-SYL fails to switch into 4-bit transfer mode.
Unfortunately, I can't find no official information about MC16021E8-SYL controller, timing information etc., not even at the Everbouquet official site. I will appreciate any help!