EarlyBird2, your reply has helped me understand this a bit more. I was able to get the norohs code to work without the initial I2CWRITE command as you suggested.

Darrel Taylor's program seems to be a work of art but I think with the INCLUDE, it's just too big for my 12F629 as I am getting, "Unable to fit variable" errors.

I have been able to use the lcdout command to write data to my LCD1602. My goal is to do the same with the i2cwrite command.

I will try to get a better understanding of how to send the control commands by studying Darrel's code.

I think what I am trying to figure out is...

Hey, you need to initialize the LCD to nibble / 4 bit mode by sending I2CWRITE commands with code $xx, ...
then to turn on the backlight you need to I2CWRITE $yy (mabe needs 2 commands for high and low nibbles)
to send data you need to I2CWRITE highNibble, then I2CWRITE lowNibble...

I will reread the thread you referenced, http://support.melabs.com/threads/98...F8574-20x4-LCD