AVR-Chat

> I've tried code written in WinAVR, and even tried 
> BASCOM, which is my emergency backup language just to see the 
> hardware is sound. Nothing.

I've always used BASCOM to build little hardware test routines to check
new hardware and it is usually the easiest way to go although I normally
use WinAVR AVR-GCC.

If you cannot get the module going with BASCOM I would suspect your
hardware or LCD is not right.

Maybe you have got some/all the lines swapped over on the ribbon cable
if you're using the 7x2 ribbon cable connector. One of my projects I had
to swap the data bit lines over as they came out of the cable in the
wrong order... YMMV

Good luck

Alex